Little Annie & Baby Dee – State of grace (Tin Angel Records)

Some reviews now of the music that's been featured regularly on the show over the last few weeks, starting with Little Annie & Baby Dee. This is the label blurb for the album.

“State Of Grace is a record that covers love, loss, leaving and the confusion of time. It features collaborations with such luminaries and modern mavericks as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Eric Chenaux, Chris Cundy (Guillemots, Cold Specks) and Jordan Hunt (Irrepresibles, Hidden Cameras). Little Annie aka Annie Anxiety Bandez, is a smokey contralto, raconteur and restless spirit who has spent the last 30 years creating a body of work that would take much more space than available here to list. Baby Dee is an enchanting composer, performance artist, classically trained harpist, circus sideshow veteran, and transgender street legend.”

A thrilling, invigorating record bringing Baby Dee’s brilliantly fluid piano work together with Little Annie’s thoroughly lived-in (the definition of authentic) voice of experience. Touches of Weimar cabaret, via Tom Waits perhaps, opera, folk and jazz. Standout tracks are the pining Angels gone before, Never dreamed you’d leave and the title track, rendered in two versions, each as outstanding as each other, first sung by Bonnie Prince Billy, then by Baby Dee. If this is lounge, it’s lounge music with a distinct edge. Superb.