Non-binary singer returns to their country roots with intimations of mortality.
After a twenty-year spell away from the genre, Canadian Rae Spoon returns to their formative years with Assigned Country Singer At Birth, their thirteenth album. Born in Calgary in 1981, the non-binary singer and writer wrote their first song as a twelve-year-old, basing it on the religion they had grown up with but subsequently finding a strong connection with country music. This dissipated as Rae Spoon became compromised and threatened by issues of gender, race and sexuality within that genre, but they tackle these in the first song written for the new record, Country Music Breaks My Heart:
“Well we fit and we fit just fine
And we’re just singing to stay alive
Cause there’s more of us than them
We’re the ones they say just don’t fit in.”
It’s a great opener with a delicious melody supported by top-class musicians, as indeed are all the tracks on this fine production. Ranging from traditional country to pop, gospel, bluegrass, electronic and experimental influences, Rae Spoon may be a new name to many of our readers, but this collection should bring much wider acclaim. In the title track, a spoken lyric bares the heart and soul of the singer. Their talent for writing is obvious as the life journey is described with honesty and wry humour. It seems a gift for singing pop and rock songs was put aside when someone would always come up and say, “Hey, you’re really good at country.”
At that point, they felt that this was not a world in which they felt completely safe, but with the passage of time, Rae Spoon is now able to express that talent through the high-quality writing and musicianship in evidence here. Now living in Victoria, British Columbia, having survived cancer and with the constant presence of disability and possibly death, the writer shares their experience through a song like Ostomy Cowboy, full of gallows humour and the upbeat Not Too Sick To Love.
The tour de force of the record comes in the penultimate track, Can’t Fail Me, featuring Cassia Hardy as vocalist, a First Nations singer from Treaty 6 (Edmonton). This was released as a single on Rae Spoon’s 45th birthday to celebrate their survival that long and is accompanied by a video directed by the artist that many will find moving.
Tackling trans identity, religion, disability and inclusion, this is a serious look at the world in which Rae Spoon has spent those years, yet it is not gloomy or morose; instead being a captivating set of songs that will lift the spirits.
