Amelia Cur­ran

There is this qual­ity that runs through Cana­dian music that I would sum up as being lyri­cally dense. When you lis­ten to likes of The Weak­erthans, or Joni Mitchell or Gord Downie, we don’t shy away from the com­pli­cated turns of phrase. When it comes to writ­ing songs that have some­thing to say, Amelia Cur­ran (Six Shooter Records) is well worth the lis­ten. She cer­tainly knows how to use words to craft nar­ra­tives which punch you in your emo­tional cen­tre. I’ve heard she’s been likened to the female Leonard Cohen, of which oth­ers include: Felic­ity Buirski, Suzanne Vega, and Fiona Apple. This is not sur­pris­ing since her song the ‘The Dozens’ sounds much like a pas­tiche of ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’. But beyond that, her songs are deliv­ered with a smoky sen­su­al­ity twinged with a world-weary out­look, as though the speaker knows how all rela­tion­ships end … badly. Her live per­for­mances (cour­tesy of Youtube) are done in a mel­low finger-picking style and inti­mate demeanor wor­thy of a red vel­vet lounge. Go and visit Amelia’s site and lis­ten to her music there.

Tags: Reviews, Singer/Songwriter

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Everything Else, Recommendations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.