Vancouver songwriter SUZIE UNGERLEIDER traded for nearly 25 years under the name Oh Susanna, in which guise she released an impressive catalogue of smart, waspish Americana. Her ditching of her previous identity seems a combination of desire to at once completely embrace her songs and dissociate herself from the less savoury heritage of the Stephen Foster song whose title she’d borrowed. It is no slight against My Name Is… to suggest that it hasn’t made much difference. On tracks such as “Ships” and “Mount Royal”, in particular, Ungerleider remains a superlative scene-setter and storyteller, with a voice managing the rare combination of being at once delicate and careworn.
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