Potter’s Daughter 2019
& Annie Haslam –
Blood And Water
American art-rock collective invite the RENAISSANCE siren for a sanguine ballad to hypnotise and haunt you.
It takes a lot of bravado for any songstress to have a chanteuse of legendary stature as a duet partner, yet Dyanne Potter Voegtlin set a solid strategy in place when she was asking Annie Haslam to add vocals to her group’s single. What may seem traditional – especially given the little record’s release on vinyl and CD – turns out to be something rather unexpected, on closer inspection, as a second glance is required to fully appreciate the song’s every detail of which there’s aplenty, especially on the piano-led, baroque B-side where the piece’s acoustic rendition will reveal vulnerability that doesn’t lie on the surface of the first version’s multiple prog layers – translucent, if intense.
The highest point of this ballad is Haslam’s voice handling lower register, while Potter Voegtlin’s soprano flutters, her ivories weaving a mesmeric veil of a barely-there, yet vibrant, beauty whose folk-tinctured flow is about to break into oratorio, once the two singers have created a heavenly choir, only to remain chained to this mortal coil when Dyanne and Annie untangle their lines and pass the momentum to Amit Chatterjee searing guitar. Aimed to embrace all seasons, it’s then that the poetry in motion, the “gift of flesh and bone” they’re shaping over the course of three minutes, should snap into reality and become palpably fragile, but it’s also there that the polyphony should feel irresistibly warm and fluid and become part of the listener’s psyche. An instant classic.
*****
