charlotte martin: dancing on needles

The past twelve months have not been great for Charlotte Martin. While looking after her young son Ronen, the prolific artist contracted intercostal neuralgia (a nerve disorder of the muscles between the ribs) after having him sleep too often on her shoulder. According to Martin, the pain was so bad that it kept her from playing the piano for more than about an hour at once. For a woman who built her musical career around the instrument, the experience was devastating. The existence of Dancing On Needles, then, is something like a gift.

Whether by design or necessity, Martin’s sixth studio album is a retreat to her past. Husband and longtime collaborator Ken Andrews takes over the production, painting more shadow into the moody electronics of 2006′s Stromata, while Martin’s vocal and piano lines (sent to Andrews by email) could feasibly be holdovers from 2004′s breakthrough On Your Shore. Martin does tiptoe away from this established ground with rockers ‘Any Minute Now’ and ‘Truth Cerium’, and even dabbles in country on the stomping title track, but the constrains of her recording mean there’s nothing here like Stromata’s dense aria ‘Just Before Dawn’ or the scattershot chants of ‘Something Like A Hero’. The good news is, there doesn’t need to be; this is some of Martin’s most gripping work to date.

It’s almost impossible to read Dancing On Needles as anything other than autobiographical. Martin has only specifically cited ‘Animal’ as about her injury, and a few tracks, such as ‘Weird Goodbye’, were written before the fact. Nevertheless, the context raises the stakes; for instance, the self-contained character arc of ‘Life Vest’, in which Martin mourns her “great ideas”, wouldn’t resonate nearly as much without a listener noticing the previews of said ideas throughout her career. Mathematics is a recurring motif here; most of these songs are an attempt to derive order from chaos, to make sense of an ordeal. By contrast, the chorus of ‘Animal’ is all too literal in its frank admission, “I loved you too hard.”

Out of necessity, Martin wrote most of Dancing On Needles without editing. This has, fortunately, had little effect on the album’s quality. Rather, keeping the original drafts preserves the marks of Martin’s influences – including, yes, Tori Amos. Martin has been bombarded with Amos comparisons ever since she put hand to piano, from the benign to the multiple strains of problematic. Every girl with a piano sounds the same, some imply, making them all interchangeable; others grant Amos a personal sound but not Martin, whom they deem a ripoff. Invalid criticisms aside, though, much of this album resembles Amos’s recent Abnormally Attracted To Sin. It’s largely coincidental; after all, Martin didn’t orchestrate Amos’s return to electronics, and tracks like ‘Volcano’ and ‘Animal’ equally resemble her own songs from Stromata. The influence instead comes out in her vocal style; pinched vowels here, brash cries there. One could, of course, be inspired by far worse.

Not everything works. Dancing On Needles sags in the second half, and album closer-in-spirit ‘Language Of God’ is glorious in every aspect but the near-Rhonda Byrne lyrics. But these are minor missteps in an otherwise cathartic work. Even the recording process is redemptive. Martin at first wanders through Andrews’ minor-key mire, distant as an email, but once healed, she soars above the murk with her strongest vocals and summons up an army of Charlottes to sing alongside her on the overdubs. It’s relieving to consider, and it’s stunning to hear.

[Test-Drive; January 31, 2011]

Written by: Katherine St Asaph

Tags: charlotte martin, dancing on needles

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 9:33 am and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.