It’s been over a year since I last checked in on Scotland’s Dot Allison, but there hasn’t really been much to report in the interim, at least not much concrete. The former One Dove chanteuse has been pretty quiet since putting out 2002’s We Are Science, preferring to collaborate with others and touring with Massive Attack. She was also a member of Babyshambles for a time but maybe the gruelling schedule of scheduling and cancelling shows got to be too much for her…

But thankfully, she’s hasn’t let her own work go by the wayside. In this French interview from last year . she said she was working a third solo album and “the direction is quite alt. country/folk. Not so electronic this time, quite organic with more guitar and traditional intrumentation” and was described by Andy Weatherall as ” Emmylou Harris meets the Velvets” (the full translated excerpt from the interview can be read here). That sounds pretty good to me, but release date info isn’t yet forthcoming. She has completed an EP (Beneath The Ivy) which is yet unreleased and continued to work on the album, which has a title of Agent Provocateur, so that’s something.

She’s also maintaining her own MySpace page and a journal on her message boards. There’s also some choice downloads available on her site, though oddly in M4A and MP4 formats – best download them straight to your desktop and play them from there, rather than in the browser. Two of the tracks are demos (presumably) from her new album, one is a collaboration with everybody’s favourite tabloid fodder Pete Doherty and the last is a track done with Massive Attack that appeared in the Jet Li film Unleashed, aka Danny The Dog.

M4A: Dot Allison – “Paper Rose” (demo)
MP4: Dot Allison – “Quicksand” (demo)
MP4: Dot Allison & Pete Doherty – “I Wanna Break Your Heart” (demo)
MP4: Massive Attack with Dot Allison – “Aftersun”

Drowned In Sound gets a few minutes to talk to Stuart Murdoch about Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit, out February 7.

Broken Social Scene kick off their sold out, two-night stand at the Kool Haus tonight, and The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun talk to Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, respectively, about the pressures of making Broken Social Scene and the hometown shows. Hey – Stars and Suns. HA!

Nellie McKay talks to The Village Voice about leaving Columbia, her childhood and animal rights work. The Washington Post also has an interview while The Washington Times chastises her for what it sees as immature behaviour and throwing hissy-fits. I’m inclined to agree, to an extent. Or more like, the days of major labels indulging artists who haven’t sold craploads of records are long, long gone. Unless getting dropped is exactly what Nellie hoped to accomplish, I don’t know what else she could have expected.

When Mocking Music compiles what they call “The Top Ten Most Interesting Indie Covers & Remixes . . . Ever!”, it seems their definition of “ever” is about a year and a half. But still, they offer downloads and commentary so it’s worth a look. Via For The Records.

np – The New Pornographers / Electric Version