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Times Colonist ~ May 2007

A girlish giggle covers dark tastes

Mike Devlin, Times Colonist
Published: Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Sunny-sounding Suzie Ungerleider, she of the girlish giggle and warm personality, likes her literature dark and, when possible, slightly morbid.

This should come as no surprise to fans of Ungerleider, whose penchant for noir-ish musical fare, under the stage name Oh Susanna, is well-known. From her stark debut, a superb seven-song EP from 1997, to 2003's self-titled gem, Ungerleider has always made her home in the arms of emotionally searing material.

Her fifth and latest album, Short Stories, is no less harrowing, though its inspiration came from a variety of sources, some of them terribly unlikely: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg, oral historian Studs Terkel and documentarian Michael Moore.

"I'm always trying to have these little short stories, and that's what I admire about other writers," Ungerleider said from the Toronto home she inhabits with husband and bandmate Cam Giroux and their 21-month-old son, Sal.

"That's what I wanted to convey with this album and that's how I wanted people to listen to it. I might as well just say right away, 'Listen to these as short stories.' "

The Ungerleider family tree also figured prominently in Pretty Face, Bullies, Pretty Penny and Filled With Gold. They were indeed inspired by family history, but her relatives would never know it. Ungerleider felt the need to infuse the songs "with a little something else" in order to protect the innocent.

"A theme in a few of the songs, without me even really knowing it, is the idea of breaking away from your old life and trying to go towards something you think is going to bring you something better. It's ambiguous if that's actually going to happen. But that theme is something that goes through a lot of my songs."

Album standout Filled With Gold is about the bond between her then-teenaged aunt and uncle, who eloped during the 1950s. Like many songs on Short Stories, it is concerned with what is not being said. "The idea of being broke and in love, and somehow that partnership carrying you through, it's a very romantic idea. A lot of times that doesn't work, but it seemed to work for them. I was really inspired by their marriage and their connection."

Elsewhere, she relied on previously published work as a framework for her own lyrics, which are both heart-breaking and heart-warming.

The inspiration for Beauty Queen came from a poem by Sandburg, whose idea, Ungerleider admitted, she "basically stole."

That said, the bleak outlook of the tune is textbook Oh Susanna.

"It's a first-person narrative of a girl who married a guy, a brute, and he came at her one too many times, so she knifed him. At the end, she's sitting in prison, but says 'I'd do it all again.' "

Greyhound Bus came about after she read Terkel's 1974 book, Working: What People Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Ungerleider was amazed to find how few songwriters have tapped into Turkel's well of ideas.

"Any songwriter who's looking for some stories, they should just go and read his books."

Cue: self-deprecating laugh. It's a staple of any conversation with Ungerleider, a native of Pennsylvania who was raised in Vancouver. There's a darkness to her sense of humour, mind you, as if by making herself the butt of her own jokes she is able to avoid feeling sorrow herself.

Her music is all the better for it, and though Short Stories has only been out a week, some listeners think it is another dark masterpiece.

Counted among those is her label boss, who saw in the album a reflection of Canadian author Alice Munro.

"The fact that he said that was affirmation for me. That's exactly where I was trying to go with the songs," she said, before quipping: "But I don't pretend that the songs I am doing are as complex or as interesting or as well done."

Cue: another self-deprecating laugh.


© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007


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