“... filled with deft metaphors, and riveting images sifted from love’s ashes. It’s so smooth you’d hardly know it’s poetry.” -New York Dailly News

"She sounds like the musical daughter of Joni Mitchell and Lou Reed, simultaneously confident and vulnerable, a practiced storyteller and poet whose stream-of-consciousness narratives of strange but vivid characters share space with diamond-cut confessional vignettes of off-center and sometimes reckless romances. Her lyrics are complex and often non-linear, but well worth following, her quiet but careful guitar accompaniment a well-matched frame." — Dirty Linen

A lifetime’s dedication to her art has made Annie Gallup something of a high priestess among people who take songwriting seriously. With every project, she challenges herself and her audience, returning to the canvas with relentless creative energy. Her discipline is to render life as it is truly - and messily - experienced, rather than how we might wish it to be. Annie: “this stripped down melodic collection somehow feels like the highest risk I've ever taken, but it's hard to quantify the risk. ...This one is a free fall.” Half of My Crime, recorded mostly as live studio takes, features duets with bass players taking the roles of bass, rhythm, lead, voice, synthesizer. The arrangements are collaborative, leaving space to feature the distinctive musical personality of each of the players: Sean Kelly, upright bass; Michael Visceglia, fretless, electric and processed bass; and Don Porterfield, fretless bass.
Borrowing forms from ancient folk tales and modern poetry, Gallup sings over her practiced bluesy guitar figures as if sharing secrets. The characters on “Half of My Crime” are wounded and wounding, seeking love and lost in confusion, full of mystery and longing: portraits so real they seem to move beyond their frames. Like the photographer Diane Arbus, Annie Gallup shows us a parallel world, singular and difficult, a mirror in which we find perplexity, sorrow, and the unresolved. And yet, at the end of the day, we are left with nothing but an awed silence. Having returned us to ourselves, the artist has left the room.

“Artie was a card sharp
The night he joined the Euchre game
He threw down the winning hand
And rocked back in his chair so wild
I almost thought he was about to smile
I know he didn’t mean to knock the fishbowl off its stand
But the bowl came crashing down
Goldfish thrashing on the ground and dying
All the grownups laughed like it was supposed to be a joke
Artie disappeared, I could hear footsteps on the landing
I was crying
I let them all believe that it was because I’d cut my hand
When the fishbowl broke
Avalon... “

1. 14 Days of Rain
2. 1917
3. 3 Brothers
4. Avalon
5. The Contender
6. 3rd Person
7. I Rode The Train
8. Enough
9. Sugar
10. Field of Flowers
11. Away From the Lights
12. Almost Forgive
13. Faithful
14. Free