Ahoj Friends, from Six Feet Under the Underground! This transmission emanates from the old pecan groves and flood plains of Deepest East Austin. This street dead ends into a wash and a draw, the beds of which are littered with rusty rebar, wheeless tricycles and flat basketballs. And along their banks, arterial game trails and bum nest eddies swirl in the urban forest. Turn around three times to flatten the grass and lay your ass down to rest a while, child. It's been one long haul, escaping those high plains. We're brought to the brink again of a year. Revolved about the sun again. And the lives lived by golden hours on lovers' isles, water rushing the rock below your feet and you all the while watching the light as it falls down the far bank and illuminites the tree leaves to electric green. Tiny claws clutch those twigs and branches. That thicket there's where SONGS FOR CREEPS has found some friendly ears...recessed deep in the skull, picking up the subharmonic frequencies of the earth's rotation, aren't you, my feathered friends? And in a feat of uncommon endurance, a single copy strayed far from the flyway and made its way to a lady writer's desk in a skyscraper in New York. And, lo: SONGS FOR CREEPS flickers among the BILLBOARD MAGAZINE Critic's Choice/Top Ten Albums of 2006, alongside Neil Young, Thom Yorke, Sonic Youth and TV On The Radio. A bloody miracle, did you hear that ice breaking? Did you see the elegant formation fly overhead? http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/yearend/2006/top10/staff_5.jsp#visakowitz This honor may or may not translate into lavishly appointed tour buses, personal masseuses and rapping the Gnostic Gospels with Sufjan Stevens in the Green Room. Witness: a quantity of my own blood packed in ice. 29 vials of it, waiting to be analyzed by one of the legions of morbidly obese chain-smoking phlebotomists employed by the clinical research facility where i just spent two of the longest goddamned days and nights of my life. The place is like a hospital and a jail with bad food and worse movies. Somebody make me a t-shirt please, I SURVIVED 29 BLOOD DRAWS IN 15 HOURS, my first in-house drug study for money was completed, anemically, the day before christmas. A wash and a draw, and ten whole minutes to kill before they do it again. I got sentimental sending off so much blood into the unknown. I blacked out once and cried once. They wake you up three hours before dawn. I considered attaching photos of the bruises, but dismissed the notion as gratuitous. I'll cry instead, of albums for sale: SONGS FOR CREEPS! And all the others that came before. Get 'em while they're hot. Get 'em when they're not. Real, physical beauties, double and triple gatefolds, saturated colors. Lyrics! Your hands are required to deliver these missives to your ears, they cost ten dollars plus two dollars for the mailman, they are worth every penny, and are only available through the High Plains Sigh Handmade Music Boutique and Psychic Apothecary. Delivered to your door! http://ats.highplainssigh.com/products.html The online store is set up for paypal, but if you'd prefer to use old fashioned currency or check please do send to: AMY ANNELLE HIGH PLAINS SIGH 1127 WALTON LANE AUSTIN, TX 78721 You can also get your copy of the very limited edition handmade covers album FAWNS WITH FANGS: SELECTIONS FROM THE DARK HEART OF THE THICKET. This is a special batch with four secret bonus tracks! The folks at Pitchdork said of this album, in a word: "excellent". No really, that's the only word they said. Elsewhere, the magnetos spark and burn. A west coast tour, with the Real Places Fantasy Trio, is shaping up for mid-March. And late March, a hop back to New, Improved York. Europe in June? Believe it. The first split 7" vinyl from High Plains Sigh coming to you in early 2007. Cause you know by 2012 the CD will be eliminated. The idiot who invented jewel cases will finally meet his eternal hellfire. It'll be all vinyl and downloads. Fire up your turntables. To address the more urgent events on the space-time continuum: a show right here in Austin on Friday. I am very pleased to play with psychedelic fiddle/banjo/kalimba conjurer Ralph White. Ralph once hung his hat with the Bad Livers, and now hangs it on abandoned islands in the Little Colorado River, where he draws detailed star charts and may very well be making the world's first low-frequency field recordings of heavy metal concerts twelve miles distant. THE PLACES and RALPH E. WHITE FRIDAY 12/29 at rock o'clock ! ! THE PARLOR 100B E. NORTH LOOP, Austin, Texas (512) 454-8965 http://www.myspace.com/theparlor Lastly, here is an excerpt from Goldmine Magazine's lovely review of SONGS FOR CREEPS, in which my songs are likened to the "bastard child of P.J. Harvey and Tom Waits"...a complex and delicate conception that might involve a whiskey moondrunk, a rowboat, a retrograde Jupiter, and a giant Celtic vulva floating ominously over a levee: "a starkly beautiful collection of dark avant-folk wanderings that can be eerily quiet and breathtakingly beautiful, Songs For Creeps mirrors the nomadic lifestyle of its maker. Known to sleep overnight in flop houses and trailer parks during long stretches of time on the road, Annelle's inspiration comes from places even creeps fear to tread...wonderfully weird, macabre songs about fading love, murderous intentions, seers and midnight explorations"~~Peter Linblad, Goldmine Magazine A funny polish broad did the last blood draw the other night at the research facility, she gave me her pierogi dough recipe. I made three kinds for the Solstace Party: venison, sauerkraut/mushroom and potato pierogi. In honor of the Polish broads who bore me. And I don't mean boring I mean borned! bring in the new and Fare Forward, Voyagers! xxamy annellexx