Syd Straw – Surprise

Syd Straw seemed to arrive from deep in the heart of nowhere in 1989 when this wonderful, under-rated album appeared on the scene. But wherever she came from she sure made some good friends fast.

The album was produced by Straw with a couple of production collaborators including  none other than  Van Dyke Parks and Daniel Lanois. She performed songs written or co-written by Peter Holsapple, Michael Stipe, Jody Harris and Peter Blegvad, and the musicians on the album were the veritable whos who including Greg Leisz, Marshall Crenshaw, Richard Thompson, John Doe, Don Was, Dave Alvin, Ben Tench, Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner and the aforementioned Stipe, Holsapple, Parks, Lanois, Harris and Blegvad.

How it didn’t become one of the stand-out albums of the decade defies logic.

Listening to the album now it’s still very, very good, but maybe not as strange as it sounded at the time.

Straw herself is an endearing vocalist, but in retrospect she was more deeply likeable than desperately unique. Not that being a “deeply likeable” singer is in any way anything short of a major compliment!

Straw had been a backing vocalist and had come to the attention of the “cool kids” when she was recruited by Anton Fier for his Golden Palominos project. Interestingly the strongest song on Surprise is still Future 40’s (String of Pearls) which features contributions from Fier and fellow Palomino Michael Stipe. It’s a countrified alterna-pop song and it still sounds triumphant 20 years later.

What did set Surprise apart was the lyrical approach Straw took. There was nothing ‘pop’ about he words and even now the lyrics bear close attention, thought and interpretation. She comes across as literate and challenging, but not deliberately obscure. It’s an album that derives great benefit from listening with the lyric sheet close at hand. It’s music that sounds great in the background but it offers a lot more value than background music.

There is a couple of wild card songs on here. Her performance of the Stephen Foster, traditional folk song Hard Times is intriguing. The Unanswered Question is almost up there with Future 40’s until it takes a couple of mystifying tangents. Think Too Hard opens the album and it’s a delicious guitar pop-rock song. Its joined by another on Side 2 – the wonderful Racing To The Ruins. And the quirky Sphinx ultimately delights after winning a close battle with a conflicting opinion that is a little too silly.

Syd Straw went on to do another reasonably well  received album War and Peace (well it took her seven years!) before disappearing from recording until 2008 when she released Pink Velour on her own label. She performs sporadically, has acted a little and moved to a small town in Vermont where she lives happily as a creative dabbler.

But Surprise was her most ambitious and fully realised album.

Shelley Harland

The first Australian album from transient singer-songwriter and producer Shelley Harland is intriguing to say the least.

 

Red Leaf is unashamedly a ‘pop” album but in an era where “pop” has become even more of a dirty word this album is a statement that “pop music” need not mean Idol contestants warbling sickly imitations of disposable genres.

 

For those needing an easy entry point intro Shelley Harland’s music references like Aimee Mann and Natalie Merchant may be useful, but there’s little echoes of artists like Mazzy Starr (a less maudlin version thereof!) and Fleetwood Mac laced through these songs. She actually reminds me of the revered and long missing in action Syd Straw. You kinda get the feeling that if Anton Fier was casting for a Golden Palominos collective these days he would have found Shelley Harland.

 

Then you get a song like Friday which is just an irresistible cheery pop song that wouldn’t be out of place on a Sheena Easton album! And while that probably sounds like a back-handed compliment, the song is just so endearing that its hard to be too dismissive. It’s kinda like those early Frente singles.

 

Harland has commuted between London, New York and Sydney and has evolved as a largely self taught musician who has mastered everything from dance music to electronica to working with the likes of John Cale and a host of underground and not-so-underground dance and electronic luminaries.

 

She’s got an extraordinary voice – it’s a delicate as gossamer and as pure as the proverbial driven snow and yet she manages to inject appropriate doses of shade and light into these songs – on a song like Sorry there’s a pain in the voice that reveals a maturity that a pop poppet could not have summoned.

 

There’s a lot more to this artist than meets the eye and it’s no surprise to me that Elvis Costello has recruited her as the opening act for his Australian tour – readers of this site are the types that are probably going to see Costello so I’d recommend that you get there on time and catch the early part of the show.

 

Shelley Harland is probably capable of more challenging and risk-taking music that Red Leaf provides but this album finds her fighting the good fight to give 2009 pop music a good name. On songs like Panic To Control, Stranger, In The Dark and the title track she succeeds admirably.