Event Info
Suzie Ungerleider, Guests TBA
Every artist rides the switchbacks of direct comparison before they earn the rig...
8:00pm
$12.00
Artists
Singer-Songwriter, Folk from Toronto Montana
Event Description
Every artist rides the switchbacks of direct comparison before they earn the right to step into their own musical shoes and leave a customized footprint. At first, Canadian singer-songwriter Oh Susanna might have been Dylanesque with her stark intense narratives. As she developed, she was sometimes called (Gillian) Welchesque for her mountain-air monologues. With the arrival of a third, full-length, self-titled album, the time for the lazy likening of Suzie Ungerleider to anyone else has passed. With its depth of accomplishment to delight everybody that hears it, the only description from this record on can be Oh Susanna-esque.
This singular artist, born in the USA but raised in Vancouver from early childhood, stood out from the crowd from the moment she released an eponymous seven-song EP in 1997, swiftly graduating to an accomplished 1999 full-length debut, Johnstown. Another two years and another remarkable maturation brought the acclaimed Sleepy Little Sailor set, one of 2001’s most delicate and sharply observed song collections.
Now comes Oh Susanna, twelve invigorating new tunes that take Suzie O’s stark lyrical observations and taut musicality and bathe them in a new light again. These pieces are rich, resourceful and rewarding, and open the window wider than ever on an artist who has become herself with a rarely seen rapidity. A performer who’s kept the folk and country-soaked ingredients of her previous work, yet approached her latest solo album with an invigorating band mentality, adding strings, horns, immediacy and fun.
“Some people like the really dark and moody, heavily blues-influenced wailing on the Johnstown record,” says Suzie, “and other people really like the lighter, “in the sky,” dreamy feeling of Sleepy Little Sailor. This one, I wanted it to be more like a band record. I was tired of being solitary.”
So, from “Carrie Lee” to “Billy” and ten songs in between, this is Oh Susanna retaining the observational, often bare style that first marked her card, but this time, as a delightful and addictive surprise, steeped more than occasionally in some cask-matured rock spirit. It’s the same group that created Sleepy Little Sailor, on a new set recorded last December in Ontario (Canada) with producer Colin Cripps and the same team of musicians augmented by one new player, Travis Good, guitarist with Toronto’s alternative country-pop outfit The Sadies.
“I don’t know what to call it,” she smiles. “Some people say it’s more like classic rock. All the people I work with musically, we all have these 70’s rock records embedded in our heads, and whenever we do something, we go back to our youth and think of those records as being the pinnacle.” They influence tracks like “Carrie Lee,” “Right By Your Side” and the positively funky “Cain is Rising,” but this no sellout of Suzie’s earlier passions, especially with the inclusion of such unvarnished, delicate pieces as “Little White Lie” and “The Fall.”
Venue
1821 Cook Street
Bar / Nightclub
Capacity150
In-Person Event
Wed. May 9th 2007 + Add to Calendar
Logan's Pub
