Oh Susanna – Sleepy Little Sailor (Deluxe Edition)
MVKA – 4 September 2020
Following in the footsteps of Jonestown, Toronto-based Oh Susanna now gives her critically acclaimed second album a 20th (well nearly) anniversary refresh, remastering the original tracks and adding five brand new acoustic versions.
Opening with the spare and vulnerable title track and following the same running order, it ranges from similar tender balladry such as the slow shuffle River Blue, through traditional folk-flavoured piano ballad Forever At Your Feet and Beauty Boy to more musically upbeat material like the bouncy, Hammond-backed Kings Road. Then you get the drawled country waltzer Ted’s So Wasted (“We walked down the aisle together / while our love took a ride in a hearse”), the lullaby-like St Patrick’s Day featuring guitarist Luke Doucet on pedal steel and an inspired slow burn country soul take on Otis Redding’s I Got Dreams To Remember, all of which culminates in the ten-minute Ride On’s tale of a prairie drifter’s fall from grace.
It seems reasonable to assume that those interested in this reissue will already be familiar with its first incarnation, so let’s focus on the acoustic material. The first three of these are actually taken from the original 2000 demo sessions with producer Colin Cripps, starting with the nautical imagery of the stripped-down Basil Donovan co-penned title cut, further exposing its bittersweet heart of love withheld and trying to hang on to dreams. Sacrifice with its theme of a lost and unfulfilled obsessive love follows on, the demos wrapped up with the even more nakedly folk textures of Beauty Boy, another song of cruel spurned love, longing and submissiveness in the hope of getting affection.
Produced by Jim Bryson, the two all-new recordings complete the reissue, first up being River Blue, a song about “how child abuse can destroy relationships long after the abuse is over” with its enigmatic childhood memories of sororal betrayal (“I always wanted to protect you/But I was too scared to”) and “when we were just two happy kids”. It ends with a number that’s undergone the biggest change in the acoustic process, a slower, more tinkling treatment of Kings Road that draws out the ache in the lyric about memories of a Jack and Jill teenage love and the wistful yearning for what was lost. Long time admirers looking to upgrade your old CD (or finally get it on vinyl) or newcomer just discovering Oh Sussana’s charms, this is a sterling reminder of her artistry and, by my reckoning, it’s just two more years before her eponymous third follows in its wake.