Still Riot

Despite a loyal following and consistent critical raves, Western Canada's original lesbian singer-songwriter Ferron has somehow managed to stay out the spotlight for the first twenty years of her career. But while the world may still not know Ferron, rest assured Ferron knows something about the world. In a beautifully husky voice as weather-worn as Marianne Faithful's and as life-affirming as Joan Armatrading's, Ferron sings grown-up songs with an elegance that encompasses the wonder and complexity of a thoroughly examined life. If the title hadn't already been taken by another "mature" songwriter, Lou Reed, her newly released eighth album Still Riot could have been aptly named Magic and Loss. While Ferron's vaguely new age, femme-centric music qualifies her as the missing link between Joni Mitchell and the Indigo Girls, the smooth adult contemporary jazz pop of Still Riot sounds closer to Rickie Lee Jones (on the punchy "Takes A Little Time") or piano lounge-era Tom Waits (on the melancholic "Dazzle the Beast"). Using fretless bass, grand piano, nylon-string guitar, sax, and strings, the arrangements are clean and unstylized. The lyrics can be clumsy, awkward, and imprecise, but more often Ferron captures dead-on the confusion, vulnerability, discovery, and growth that goes into life. She tells her own stories, but with a simple dignity and warmth that can spark a listener's personal memories. This quality, ambiguous as it seems, makes the difference between the self-indulgent diarist many songwriters become and the useful, giving artist. --Roni Sarig