MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: OH SUSANNA - A GIRL IN TEEN CITY

Favourite roots performer Oh Susanna brings her latest out on tour, including a bunch of shows in my Maritimes stompin' grounds. This one is a concept album, and a very refreshing one. She's gone back to look at her teen years, when she was doing all those heartbreaking, crazy, fun, dangerous, and life-changing things so many of us did. For Suzie, it was being a bit of a punk in Vancouver, but it feels like it could be Anytown, Canada, something familiar for almost all of us. "Meet me tonight over coffee and cigarettes, by the neon light of the Varsity Grill." It was the Capitol Gardens for me, but whatever.

There's nothing particularly exciting happening in this view of the Vancouver punk scene, but that's the beauty of the album. It's the journey and the memories that are important, the story-telling we can all recognize bits of, and the shared emotions that inspires. Walked All The Way Home is a simple story of getting carded at a club and kicked out, and heading home mad in the rain. It's the feeling she remembers, as the mood changes on the long walk, "then you see the beauty of being alone." Whether you had good or bad experiences at that age, or probably a mixture of both, there's no denying what an important part of your life they were, and Oh Susanna does a masterful job of describing that time.

You'll see Oh Susanna at the Trailside Cafe in Mount Stewart, P.E.I. on Thursday, Aug. 31. Then she hits the Halifax Urban Folk Festival on Sept 1 and 2, before landing in Pictou at Fat Tony's on the 3rd. A small break occurs, before she's at Grimross Brewery in Fredericton Sept. 6, and the Maritime jaunt finishes up Sept. 8 in Cape Breton at the Iona Heights Inn.