Past and present in the soundtrack of a lifetime.
Memories often seem to gravitate around specific songs, which stick in your mind as some of the defining pieces of a particular time or place. They hide in the recesses of your brain, awaiting the next time you’ll listen to that particular song again, and everything will come flooding back. Music defines different periods of your life, but it can also help you better understand them. That is, if, like Suzie Ungerleider, you’re lucky enough to have the talent (and courage) to translate your experiences into music.
“Among the Evergreens” feels like an evaluation of life halfway along the road. The perfect time to pause to reflect upon where you are, how far you’ve gone, and what this might mean to you. The album is interestingly divided into two differentiated sections: ‘Then’ (side A) and ‘Now’ (you guessed it, side B). Listening to the album is like a journey through someone else’s life, with a privileged view of its changing stages and defining relationships. It’s interesting to see how they shift as the stories progress from adolescence to youth, with its ambitions and general chaos, before the slowing down of life, a more settled atmosphere, and then the vicarious anxieties concomitant to motherhood. Different moments are presented like a collection of snapshots, incredibly vivid thanks to the carefully chosen details that make up the lyrics.
Those discovering Ungerleider for the first time might not be aware she has thrice been nominated for a Juno Award, and four times for a Canadian Folk Music Award. Recognition has long been present, despite no breakthrough into more mainstream circuits. So, is this critical acclaim justified? Without a doubt. Ungerleider displays a vocal mastery that enables rich changes in dynamics, in songs crafted to perfection through poignant stories and moving melodies. However, much is also owed to producer Jim Bryson, who Ungerleider credits with a rich influence on both her sound and musical perspective. The album’s sound is crisp and clean, and the arrangements tasteful. The slight variations in instrumentation never detract from the consistency maintained throughout, which renders Ungerleider’s repertoire of unfolding tales into a cohesive and well-rounded album.
Ungerleider has recorded over ten records since her start in music in the late 90s, but this is only her second not to be released under her previous stage name, Oh Suzanna. With this change in packaging, there has also been a change in the approach to songwriting and the use of personal experience as source material. “Among the Evergreens” will again make you glad that she took on this new perspective, as what you’ll hear from start to finish (be sure to stick around for the beautiful last track ‘The Wilds’) is an album that resonates deeply. Melody and delivery combine perfectly to bring about bursts of feeling contained in the different songs, regardless of how biographical or fictitious the stories might be. Real or not, they ring undoubtedly true.
