Nancy White, Stickers On Fruit (Borealis, 2002)
Nancy White is a humorous Canadian singer, originally from tiny Prince Edward Island, but now gone west to Toronto. You could call Nancy White the Christine Lavin of Canada, but I won't because I wasn't as critically nice to Lavin as I will be to White! But they are stylistically similar, satirizing those nutty conditions of humanity from a woman's viewpoint on the hill of wise obervation. Songs in both repertoires range from comic to sober.
On her 13th (!) album, Stickers On Fruit, White makes snappy musical comments on environmental assholes ("I Sweep the Sidewalk With the Hose") and on recording bootleggers ("And I Copied It"). I felt a little embarrassed on both these counts! Not surprisingly her band uses flashy arrangements that wittily match the song, and the bootlegger song was a subtle party. White is joined by her electronically voiced teenage daughter on this song, which spans the history of bootlegs from taped LPs to Internet downloads. Moms will especially enjoy two tracks, though the themes are a bit timeworn. How awful to find yourself on the other side of the coin you never realized would be flipped! "My God My Mom" is sung by her daughters, The Wilde Sisters:
"There was the time that boy from school
showed up and sort of looked our way.
I said 'Let's go'
She said 'Isn't that the boy you always say is dorky.
I think he's cute, he has a face just like a corgi.
Aren't you going to introduce me? Well, I'm waiting.'
God!"
Well, mom has the wallet and money and the keys to the car, eh?
The other is a non-Jewish Jewish song called "The Shabbas Goy C'est Moi." Great to finally be vindicated in mom's role of household doormat by comparing one's role to a professional Sabbath gentile. "Shabbas Goy" was a new term for me, as well as the unusual 24/7 rhythm.
In the dedicatedly Canadian "The Ballad of the Wannabe," the heroine is attracted to exotic men, until she gives up and becomes who she is, part of her own Rich Canadian Culture, learning to say "oh look he shoots he scores." Funny, I've always thought of Canadian men as cute and exotic! But "Canadian" is a mosaic, n'est pas? The Marijuana gone wrong "Mary Jane's Got Your Number" is in its own way an obituary for the 70s and seems very sad despite its satirical content. The backing music here may be based on traditional ballads and fife music from Mississippi. "Mitterand's Last Meal" is a fun description of Mitterand's penultimate days and last engorging meal. "Freefloating Anxiety" is about possibly tainted drinking water and something flaky you said back in '87. Finally, "So Damn Taut" is a serious song about a disastrous mid-life romance.
Other songs have good lyrics when read, but don't necessarily strike when heard. Maybe they don't work, or they don't work for me yet, or they would work if they had better tunes or arrangements, or maybe even better lyrics. Though the band knows what they're doing, what is played is part of the comedy, meant to support White. This is another coin with two sides, because, as with so many albums in which accompaniments are subordinated to interesting words, there is not much musically astounding to listen to. Styles range from countryish to folk-pop, with some ethnic accents thrown in for emphasis.
Stickers On Fruitis a cute album with surprisingly incisive words, mostly recommended for Boomers because the content pokes many of its gentle but sharp daggers at people in their middle years. But you don't have to be a Canadian Boomer to understand.
Freefloat to Nancy White's cyber-viewpoint here.
