An Anne For All Seasons

[November 5th, 2008]

BY BRANDON SEIFERT 243-2122

[CHANGELING POP] Anne Adams is sort of the Cinderella of the Portland music scene. She’s a fascinating and mercurial personality, as direct and sharp in person as she is charming and personable when she performs. And when Adams takes a stage to show off her repertoire of multifaceted, loop pedal-loving pop gems, she often does it in a secondhand prom dress and homemade fairy wings, surrounded by exotic stuffed animals or light-up lawn deer. In Portland, a town not traditionally known for playing dress-up, this causes the occasional sound guy to refer to her as “princess.”

Adams used to front band Per Se, but this summer she shed that skin and emerged as solo artist Grey Anne (a name she carried throughout childhood, as her mother chronically would start to call Adams by her sister Grace’s name and then correct herself mid-word). Her long-awaited, long-delayed solo debut finally arrives this week from local label Greyday Records. And like Adams’ music itself, her album release is a thing of mixed feelings and shades of meaning.

A scene veteran by Portland standards, she relocated here from Anacortes, Wash., in 2001 and joined pop group the Persimmons. After that band’s breakup, she started playing both solo and band shows under the Per Se moniker (a name that evokes “ambivalence or complications...themes to which I’m naturally drawn”), but concluded that the name was neither Googleable or comfortable and adopted her new title this summer. Adams feels the name Grey Anne hints at the same ambivalence as Per Se: gray—not black or white, positive or negative.

Which is indicative of how she feels about her album, Facts N Figurines, released this week following a year of setbacks ranging from money problems to a sprained ankle (“I hopped on one leg for about a calendar year”). Adams likes the album, and is glad to finally have something tangible to offer at her shows, but she’s not sure it shows off the faster-tempo, peppier end of her songbook.

But more than that, the erudite 29-year-old is worried about the album on an existential level few of her musical colleagues seem to wrestle with. “I hate for people to be able to listen to me when I’m not there!” Adams explains. “That’s not fair! I want to be able to be there, so I can represent for myself. So I can in some way win them over if the music doesn’t do it.”

Adams feels like it’s her duty to keep her live shows interesting, explaining, “any given door price-payer is possessed of several senses, and it’s nice of you to give them something to look at as well as something you can listen to.” Her live pageantry covers up the kind of worry that her album is laying bare: What if people don’t like the music for itself?

The tall, blonde-haired songwriter doesn’t need to worry; she also doesn’t need lawn deer and fairy wings to enchant her listeners. Adams’ musical gifts, admirably showcased on the album, are twofold: She writes pop with the viral simplicity of nursery rhymes, and then layers some of the most sophisticated, grown-up wordplay in town over them. “Adelaide,” where each new line begins with the word the last line ended with (accompanied by hand-claps) is sort of the prototypical Adams song; while “Naughty Heart Clean” stands out both for its supremely articulated portrait of how love going wrong permanently shapes us as people, and for its lush arrangement, with Adams providing an overdubbed doo-wop chorus and the guitar-bass-drums you usually expect in pop music. In general, the album’s orchestration is sparse—typically just her electric guitar and perhaps a snare drum or the sound of her own claps and vocalizations—which sets her apart in a business obsessed with “filling in the low end.”

Taken all together, Adams’ songs are like reflective ponds on a still summer’s day—pretty on the surface, but with depths of meaning and craft that become more apparent the longer you examine them. Far from the downtempo, melancholy product she seems afraid of, the album’s somber spots are like passing clouds that make Adams’ sunshine all the more warm.

Releasing her songs out into the wild is something the songwriter is coming to terms with. And in the end, all she can do is make a wish. “I hope it gets respected in a way that I do not by soundmen when I show up in a prom dress.”