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Back in the 1980s, Anny Celsi left Portland for Los Angeles, intent on an acting career. For several years she had been writing and performing on the local theater scene, most notably as part of the Storefront Actors Theatre. Hollywood beckoned, but the movie star thing didn't work out. Celsi started writing songs and, in the process, may have found her true calling. On her new CD, "Little Black Dress & Other Stories," she shows an actor's feel for character and a tunesmith's knack for the perfect pop hook. Currently "working the country a little piece at a time," she is scheduled to perform a series of local shows this weekend. As the CD title promises, Celsi's songs are stories -- detailed, carefully crafted tales that linger in the mind long after the last note fades away. Bewitched by a beautiful woman, a man embezzles $20,000, abandons his wife and children and winds up homeless. In the aftermath of a fling with a musician, a woman pithily observes that, "You hear one bass solo, you've pretty much heard them all." A girl in the midst of a nervous breakdown feels like " a closet full of empty hangers, a nest of black and twisted wire." A musical journey in the best sense, "Little Black Dress" unfolds like a tightly written script. To support the short-story feel of the project, Celsi wrote liner notes with introductions to each song that read like Raymond Chandler outtakes. Together with the colorful "pulp novel" cover designed by her brother, comic book artist David Chelsea, it's a distinctive package. While her voice occasionally recalls Aimee Mann or Natalie Merchant, Celsi's music invokes vintage touchstones such as Jackie DeShannon and Dusty Springfield. Producer Kevin Jarvis has managed a neat trick here -- a sound that's both highly arranged and warm as an old vinyl LP. Jarvis is another name that will be familiar to Portland club-goers. As a drummer, he played with '80s favorites like The Odds and Johnny & the Distractions. Since relocating to Los Angeles, he's become a sideman of choice for artists such as Shawn Mullins, John Wesley Harding, Grant Lee Phillips and others. On the phone recently from her home in Los Angeles, Celsi talked about the process of creating "Little Black Dress." The stylistic references on your record are impressive. You evoke a '60s feel, but in a very subtle way. Well, I love that stuff. I guess a couple of times we did really consciously go for the Dusty Springfield sound. Kevin and I listened to a lot of records together. The whole production took a couple of years. As it went along, we would listen to records and say, "Let's see if we can bag this." The intros you wrote for each song are really fun. How did that occur to you? I had finished all the recording and I thought, there's a little more to say about each person in each song. If you look at a song, there's one dimension of what happens in the song. But there is also, you know, the hotel room, the drink on the counter, the things that happened to that person before they got to that point. I just looked at each song and sort of riffed on it. You've got some really good chord changes and strong melodies. Do you have an ear for those things? Well, I hope so. I consider myself more a writer than a musician. I don't really play that well. I learned to play guitar when I was about 12 and I still play the same way. What is your goal with this record? My goal is to have a sustainable career as a songwriter. I'm a one-girl operation right now, and it's incredibly overwhelming sometimes. But, you know, my label, MasterCard Records (laughs), gives me total artistic freedom. But they're going to want to recoup eventually. www.oregonlive.com/music/oregonian/index.ssf
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