Remember the backlash when 20-year-old Tanya Tucker decided to “go rock” in the late ’70s? The third album from Suzie Ungerleider, alias Oh Susanna, is unlikely to cause quite as big a stink — the Vancouver singer-songwriter has always been vocal about her love for the Rolling Stones — but stylistically, it leaps across a chasm almost as wide as Tucker did when she traded “Delta Dawn” for Elvis and Chuck Berry.
The album opens with “Carrie Lee”, a rollicking, piano-driven number that recalls the tougher moments of Linda Ronstadt’s Simple Dreams. While the ensemble sound throughout this twelve-song set is fuller and more energetic than on 2001’s stripped-down Sleepy Little Sailor (with Sadies guitarist Travis Good lending a hand), the focus remains on Ungerleider’s expressive voice, which is displayed to even greater affect on the bluesy “Unknown Land”, particularly its a cappella introduction.
But the quality overall varies wildly. The thundering “Cain Is Rising”, a litany of political hot-buttons, aims for the thunder and bite of Springsteen’s last album, yet resorts to lyrical cliches (“chickens coming home to roost”); a shame considering that elsewhere Ungerleider still captures vivid images like the “angora sweater between you and bliss” (“Little White Lies”). And although Ungerleider has interpreted others’ material well in the past, her reading of Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” sounds anemic next to better-known versions by Nico and Marianne Faithfull.
Fortunately, the album has its fair share of high points, too. The minimal “Zoe”, featuring a discrete chamber string ensemble, paints a sympathetic portrait of a little girl acting up on her eighth birthday, while the climactic “Billy”, an elegy for a drug addict in 6/8 time, recalls the dark vignettes that attracted fans to earlier Oh Susanna recordings.
This is the work of an artist in transition — and an awkward one at that — but it still hints that if Ungerleider can keep her proven strengths in mind while mining this more accessible vein, her next album could be both a critical and commercial success.
