New Music: Dot Allison – One Love

Dot Allison released her debut solo album Afterglow back 1999, and since then, the Scottish singer/songwriter has refreshed and reworked her influences and sound with every release. The folk essence remains however, as you can hear on One Love.

The song, which features on her recent Heart Shaped Scars album, is a delicate, ethereal affair. Soft yet stripped down, it allows Allison’s vocals to shine through, a beacon of purity in a highly pastoral musical landscape. Fans of Vashti Bunyan, Joanna Newson, and Richard Dawson will find a lot to love in the finely woven sounds of One Love and Heart Shaped Scars.

Says Allison about the song, “One Love is a song about someone feeling unsure in a relationship, needing reassurance but instead being left in the shade of the many other loves of the desired, and the fragile love perishing in the shade. The flower metaphors are rare flowers, I use them to signify a rare kind of fragile but precious love, and they may even infer the female pudenda… I like the ambiguity of the metaphor. I like Juliette Rose as it seems to hint at Shakespeare and blood camellia suggesting flesh, veins and a pulse, fire lilies to me imbue the idea of passion. I like the idea of her petals closing in the shade and rivalry of other love interests.”

Dot Allison’s Heart Shaped Scars is out now, with a green vinyl limited-edition version of the album available via SA Recordings. Be sure to check out Dot Allison’s Instagram and Twitter accounts for streaming details, which include Apple Music and Spotify.