Oh Susanna

Every artist rides the switchbacks of direct comparison before they earn the right to step into their own musical shoes and leave a customised 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 for Hot Records, 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 takes Suzie'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 at a rate of knots. A performer who's kept the folk and country-soaked ingredients of her previous work, yet approached her latest solo album with a really 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, dreamy feeling of Sleepy Little Sailor. This one, I wanted it to be more like a band record. I was tired of being solitary."

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