The concept album: an idea ”“ be it lyrical, musical ”“ is explored across the body of a record. And with that, Anna Kashfi needs a little précis. In 1957 Anna Kashfi married Marlon Brando and was considered by all in Hollywood to be an Indian beauty. After two years, furious at the discovery of his wife’s true past, Brando divorced Kashfi. Contrary to her own accounts of her childhood, Kashfi was in fact the daughter of a London steel-worker, raised in Cardiff ”“ where she worked in a Butcher’s ”“ before moving to London to become a model. The divorce resulted in a fierce custody battle for the couple’s child forcing Kashfi to turn to alcohol dependency, beginning her fall from grace.Anna Kashfi is also a band from Manchester based around the core duo of signer Sian Webley and multi-instrumentalist and producer James Youngjohns. Survival, the duo’s second long player, aims to reflect the duality and tragedy of the real-life Anna Kashfi.‘A Loney Place’ opens proceedings and before you’ve had a chance to think Webley’s breathy voice pines, “I was born when you kissed me, I died when you left,” as Youngjohns provides a bed of dreamy keyboard swells and tremolo guitar. This is the sort of stuff that wouldn’t sound out of place on something with David Lynch’s name on it. In fact, this wouldn’t sound out of place on the Lynch / Danger Mouse / Sparklehorse collaboration of last year.The rest of the record’s opening continues in a similar fashion: ‘Glass House’ is all acoustic guitars, lively brushed drums and strings swells; ‘The Loser’s Prize’, with is gospel, unaccompanied harmonies champions optimism in defeat, “Life is a game no one can win, but I’ll bring the loser’s prize than come with nothing”; and ‘Drinker’s Song’, complete with vinyl crackle, is played out slow and brooding, strings scraping and floor toms marching.It’s not until ‘Red Rag Doll’ that we find Anna Kashfi partaking in a little genre-hopping. The first rise in tempo, this prohibition era, slide guitar country stomp of a track just fails to hit the mark, treading dangerously close to KT Tunstall territory. ‘Devil’s Bridge’, a duet with Willard Grant Conspiracy’s Robert Fisher, is one with for the folk traditionalists: a tale of a town tricking the devil into building them a free bridge backed by droning finger-picked acoustic and dancing fiddles.The unseen (or should that be unheard) hero of this album is arguably Youngjohn. His instrumentation is inventive throughout and even if the album does suffer a minor identity crisis his ideas with instuments in hand and hand on the desk manage to reign in the disparate genres covered across the album.When tackling slow-core, country folk Anna Kashfi hit the mark more often than not; Youngjohn’s musical ideas complement Webley’s voice perfectly, finding themselves somewhere between Portishead and a downtrodden, downbeat, English She & Him. It’s when things take a turn for the light-hearted (‘Bumble Bee’, ‘Your Baby’) when listening becomes a little more trying.

Buy the album on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/red-rag-doll/id342813133?uo=4" title="Anna_Kashfi-Survival_(Album)" text="iTunes"]| Rhythm Online