The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman; the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to
heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
— William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act 5, Scene 1.
Alison Sudol, singer/songwriter (b. December 23, 1984), takes her stage name from within Shakespeare’s play. A Fine Frenzy captures something of the nuance in her voice and music. And the magic and mystery inherent in the myths and sources for that play ring inside her music, her voice. She is medieval, modern, impish, sweet and sad. Her red hair makes her different, and she stands out from the pack for other reasons. She is indie, alternative, fresh. Vulnerable. I hear a woman on the verge, beautiful, but not tired, not jaded, still hopeful. Newly excited by her own power, she understates it, still willing to gamble, to chance the journey and the landing.
Her debut album, One Cell In The Sea (2007), brings us the gifts of a young woman touched by art, literature, by Nature and evolving sensibilities . . .
“Come On, Come Out”
Alison bears watching. Her future on the shore, her musical future in the wake of Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, Natalie Imbruglia and Keane among others . . . and her stories in the wake of C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll and Dickens. She has said in interviews that she is writing children stories, in the tradition of Narnia.