(no subject)
Current writing mini- project can be found beneath the cut - was thinking about pitching it to BUST or something similar...Don't know - it's not really a music review, is it? Con-crit is, as ever, massively welcome! Hope you enjoy.
Why Every Girl Should Own A Carolyn Mark Album
You might think that you’ve never heard of Canadian country chanteuse Carolyn Mark., but you do know her, you just don’t know it yet. Brightly coloured vintage dresses. Poppy-red lipstick. A voice like the ghost of Patsy Cline. The last person to close down the bar and the first person to open the front door to let the party in. The persona Mark has constructed and performed over her recording career is that of the consummate good time gal, ‘lonesome and broke, never laid, never paid/Back in Chumpville again’, but still able to sling a wisecrack or three at her own expense, to say nothing of the men around her. "There’s the one that got away, and the one that’s in the way, I just want to be the one that got away with it" she sings dryly on 2007's Nothing is Free. A gloriously smart mouth is tempered by needle-sharp observations on daily living, and the whole messy business of striving for what you really want even as you make do with what you have (alcohol liberally included). Mark’s great strength lies in the way her gunpowder and honey voice marries an elegant turn of phrase with an utterly relaxed natural delivery. Very few singers could get away with making ‘In real life, I don’t know/If you’d cross the street for me/If the light was green for me’ sound as sincerely rueful as she does. In ‘The Business End’, the extended twisting of institutionalized authoritarian phrases serve to sum up all of the missed opportunities and lost loves and inability to settle that a life can hold: ‘Keep your hopes down and out, in the open nice and low keep ‘em where we can see ‘em...’ She’s the gum-snapping, worldly waitress at your favourite all night diner, the one who says ‘You can’t get dinner in Reno/At a place that ain’t a casino’, an expansive philosophical observation when made at three o’clock in the morning over really bad coffee. She’s the best friend who calls you up to blurt out about how she ‘was totally/ Dreaming about Vincent Gallo last night/ Again (Whoops I dropped the phone.)’ She’s your next-door neighbour; she’s your grey sheep sister; she’s every girl who ever threw a party over throwing out a man, who’ll laugh at her own regrets and haul you out of yours with a well-timed one-liner. She’ll get you through good days and bad days. Go forth and listen.
Discography
Party Girl
The Other Woman (as The Corn Sisters, with Neko Case, 2000)
Terrible Hostess
The Pros and Cons of Collaboration
Just Married: An Album of Duets
Nothing Is Free
Let’s Just Stay Here
.(with N.Q. Arbuckle, 2009) (2007)(2007) (2004) (2002) (2000)
Why Every Girl Should Own A Carolyn Mark Album
You might think that you’ve never heard of Canadian country chanteuse Carolyn Mark., but you do know her, you just don’t know it yet. Brightly coloured vintage dresses. Poppy-red lipstick. A voice like the ghost of Patsy Cline. The last person to close down the bar and the first person to open the front door to let the party in. The persona Mark has constructed and performed over her recording career is that of the consummate good time gal, ‘lonesome and broke, never laid, never paid/Back in Chumpville again’, but still able to sling a wisecrack or three at her own expense, to say nothing of the men around her. "There’s the one that got away, and the one that’s in the way, I just want to be the one that got away with it" she sings dryly on 2007's Nothing is Free. A gloriously smart mouth is tempered by needle-sharp observations on daily living, and the whole messy business of striving for what you really want even as you make do with what you have (alcohol liberally included). Mark’s great strength lies in the way her gunpowder and honey voice marries an elegant turn of phrase with an utterly relaxed natural delivery. Very few singers could get away with making ‘In real life, I don’t know/If you’d cross the street for me/If the light was green for me’ sound as sincerely rueful as she does. In ‘The Business End’, the extended twisting of institutionalized authoritarian phrases serve to sum up all of the missed opportunities and lost loves and inability to settle that a life can hold: ‘Keep your hopes down and out, in the open nice and low keep ‘em where we can see ‘em...’ She’s the gum-snapping, worldly waitress at your favourite all night diner, the one who says ‘You can’t get dinner in Reno/At a place that ain’t a casino’, an expansive philosophical observation when made at three o’clock in the morning over really bad coffee. She’s the best friend who calls you up to blurt out about how she ‘was totally/ Dreaming about Vincent Gallo last night/ Again (Whoops I dropped the phone.)’ She’s your next-door neighbour; she’s your grey sheep sister; she’s every girl who ever threw a party over throwing out a man, who’ll laugh at her own regrets and haul you out of yours with a well-timed one-liner. She’ll get you through good days and bad days. Go forth and listen.
Discography
Party Girl
The Other Woman (as The Corn Sisters, with Neko Case, 2000)
Terrible Hostess
The Pros and Cons of Collaboration
Just Married: An Album of Duets
Nothing Is Free
Let’s Just Stay Here
.(with N.Q. Arbuckle, 2009) (2007)(2007) (2004) (2002) (2000)