It's taken more than a year, but finally, Inara George's All Rise opus has been given a UK release. Readily available on import at no extra cost, the necessity for it is questionable. But with a new album on the way, featuring songs co-written by Idlewild's Rod Jones, and a performance with the very same coming up in London, the publicity factor must be paramount.
Conjectured music industry politics aside, All Rise is worth every bit of the exposure it will be given. Ringing true with touches of everything, from easy-listening folk numbers and country-tinged ballads to upbeat pop songs; it is a complete album in a genre of incomplete albums. In a world over-populated with indie songstresses, all never doing much different to everyone else, Inara George is an, as yet, unseen gem, just waiting to be discovered by the adoring public.
Opening with the morose "Mistress", All Rise travels through sequences and movements of soft acoustic numbers, juxtaposed with upbeat creations ("No Poem") and electric guitar driven pop-songs ("Genius"). All enshrouded in dark melodies and unique vocals, the variety of influences melts together in watercolor to create a complete masterpiece. Carrying ambiances of Cat Power and all those old folk albums you'll never hear, All Rise never imposes itself on the listener. Never asks for the attention it merits. It just exists and just waits for the listener to become engrossed.
Reaching apogee at the nigh-epic "Fools in Love", a perfect splice of folk guitars and pop melody, All Rise is a journey through a muddle of influences, timbres and sounds that never belonged together on the same album. An unfaltering piece of modern genius. Rising up to the upbeat pop-influenced "Turn Off/On", through a nexus of acoustic opuses, and descending through the quiet "A Day", the album ends with "Everybody Knows". A song almost contrived from an ancient Sega Mastersystem theme that could have been played on a child's Mickey Mouse keyboard.
It is unfair to overestimate, and indeed, underestimate the influence that Cat Power has had on All Rise. Musically, it transcends anything Chan Marshall has managed this side of the millennium. It suffers neither from the eccentricity nor disparities of the last two Cat Power albums. The influence belongs, not in the music per se, but through the style of delivery and the overall ethos. Even down to the fact that there is an audience out there for such modern sounds with such archaic influences. But there is more to Inara George than Cat Power. She has built upon and augmented what Cat Power may have started, once upon a time, and somewhere along the way.
Her songs relay an anonymous charm and delicacy so often missing from her contemporaries. Her albums are devoid of the manic vacillations and unpredictability of her influences. Every song on All Rise deserves its place, and every song comes together as a part of something much bigger that is, somehow, never entirely seen or revealed. A concept album without the concept, All Rise is a jigsaw of individual songs that have no place other than along side each other. It is a wondrous flight of musical fantasy and song writing brilliance that gels together without ever trying to be something that it isn't. Open and honest all the way, All Rise and Inara George deserve any and all of the attention this re-release brings.
