LYNNE HANSON
Ice Cream in November
Okay, just let me say how much I adore Lynne Hanson. She has been called “Canada’s Queen of Americana,” though her self-assessment is that she’s “too tough for folk and too blues-influenced for country.” Hanson is as likely to wail on her Gretsch as warble to her acoustic. Small wonder she’s an independent artist, though I’m pretty sure that’s as much her choice as that of the music industry.
Hanson has just dropped–as in today–her 9th solo album, the wonderfully named Ice Cream in November and, no, it’s not a sweet metaphor or a flight into nostalgia. To make certain she didn’t fall into the trap of repeating herself, Hanson worked with Blair Michael Hogan, who cowrote nine of the album’s dozen songs, joined her as a sideman, and helped her veer in different directions. The title track is sonically adventurous and requires a singer with Hanson’s power and timing to carry the song and keep us in a melancholic mood. She sings that she’s as lonely as ice cream in November because too many look away and cast their gaze at, Beauty queens/That no one remembers/Dancing across the screen/A plastic dream machine/Screaming look at me. In her own subtle way, Hanson puts the hurt on the shallow attachments of a squeaky wheel culture.
Hanson tries on lots of hats on this record. The surf guitar treatment on “Shadowland” makes it deliciously retro in that too-bluesy-for-country way she noted. And she sure wasn’t aiming for Nashville-style wholesomeness with lyrics such as, My daddy was a preacher/I didn’t know him all that well/One hand on the Bible/Both feet bound for hell/Truth, lie, no surprise/You can’t unring that bell/Tell me all your dirty secrets/I promise I won’t tell. It’s also one of several times she turns back the clock ever so slightly. Listen to “100 Mile Wind,” in which she mixes dollops of Western music, outlaw balladry, and a giddyup structure to blend past imagery (Bonnie and Clyde) with the dust and drugs of modern-day Oklahoma. (Yeah, another person who understands the U.S. better than its native-born.)
If you’re looking for Hanson’s Canadian roots, she has two that take her observations back home. “Le Bon Moment” is sung in French and is another song that implores us not to look away. At one point she evokes Romeo and Juliette, reminds us it’s a tragedy, and in the next breath pleads, me n’oublie pas (don’t forget me). If I had to pick my favorite song on Ice Cream in November, though, it would be “Hip Like Cohen,” which is simultaneously is hip, but is also laced with tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating humor. Musically it hops, bops, and features smart (and smart ass) writing like, Sipping sidecars while posing/Lining up to be seen/Proud to be postmodern/Without really knowing what that means. It’s simply an infectious song that’s cool when she sings it with a band or sits on a stool and belts it out unplugged.
Every track on this album sparkles and Hanson certainly succeeded in breaking her own mold, even though I’ve never found anything particularly repetitive about her music. Like Mary Chapin Carpenter, her deeper tones resonate perfectly with her mature outlook on life, intuitive sense of how to shape a song, and the wisdom to know when to ramp up the power and when to let herself drift with well-considered melodies and solid beats. This is a polished, gutsy, and substantive release.
Rob Weir
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