Mary Margaret O'Hara
Miss America
(1988, Virgin/1996, Koch)

 

Miss America

It is unsurprising that the sole full-length record released by Canada's Mary Margaret O'Hara was nothing short of genius. Nor is it surprising that this solitary album has garnered the singer more respect and influence than most receive over an entire career of steady record release. With its strong and competent reggae, jazz, blues, folk and pop influences, O'Hara delivers with a demented beauty that can bounce from elegant, country croonings, to jerky, unorthodox ad-lib to highly original pop sophistication.
Understandably, the cast of Miss America tends to be on the innovative, while still solid and rhythmic, side, including the powerful, haunting strat work of Rusty McCarthy, jazz bassist David Pilch Elias, experimental violinist Hugh Marsh and superb drummer Michael Sloski. The gentle purity of Mary's voice comes across stunningly on the achingly dusty "Body's in Trouble" and "Dear Darling", yet the beauty she denotes never comes without unsettling, while nontheless consuming, surges of emotionally tense, yet solomn, insanity. Never failing to muddle the words into free-form, incredibley executed, jibberish ad-lib, the strangeness in which astounding pieces such as "Year in Song" and "My Friends Have" are delivered is completely original, and helplessly dark. 'I'm ready to put you under light sedation' wails

O'Hara, before the passage 'joy is the aim', on the former is shredded into the jerking 'is the aim, eh joy'. The reggae guitar and pop beat of the reflective "Anew Day" is, also, a far cry from anything the rock world has heard from, and the bittersweet lyrical couplet of 'Though the ground is wet with sorrow/It will always look that way/Everyone walk in brightness/Cause it's a new day' reveals an outlook that is both uplifting and highly insightful. The album culminates with the final three tracks. "Keeping You in Mind", with its walking bassline and shuffling brush-drumming sounds like an old standard Billie Holiday might've performed in a New York 1940's nightclub. Breath cannot help but be held in wonder as O'Hara croons sensuously over the soft-humming melody. The most unorthodox instance on the album, "Not Be Alright" is driven by a heavy, thudding bassline, almost African-offbeat drumming, jekry, mutated-reggae strat work from McCarthy and O'Hara's utterly psychotic beltings of 'It won't come back/It won't stay away'. The record closes as O'Hara is accompanied by only acoustic bass on "You Will Be Loved Again", her gorgeously pure voice squeezing every ounce of elegance from the quiet, contemplative melody.
A masterpiece in every respect, Miss America's atmosphere and emotion is constantly shifting, rarely treading the same ground twice, resulting in a constant hold over the listener. Perhaps O'Hara may take years to release another record, but what's she already left behind is enough to captivate with the equivalent of an entire discography.

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