Two-time Juno Award nominee Suzie Ungerleider has today released her highly anticipated 10th studio album My Name Is Suzie Ungerleider, via MVKA. Celebrating the release, Suzie has also shared the video for ‘Ships’, the 6th single from the album following from Sweet Little Sparrow’ (which featured on the August issue of Uncut magazine’s covermount CD), ‘Summerbaby’, ‘Baby Blues’, ‘Mount Royal’, and ‘Pumpkins’.
Evoking a retro super 8 atmosphere, the video for Ships was shot using a monocular lens that emphasises blue and grey tones; a fitting visual accompaniment for a the melancholic lyrical content. Whilst not directly written about the journey Suzie undertook when reclaiming her real name as a musician, the track feels like an apt closing statement, which Suzie describes as “about witnessing, looking back and healing. We all have some grief that we lock away. This song is about how when someone recognizes and bears witness to our pain, our wounds can be healed”.
‘My Name Is Suzie Ungerleider’ officially opens a new chapter of her already distinguished and highly successful career, being the first release since the artist formerly known as Oh Susanna announced that she would now record and perform under her birth name.
Bursting with trademark evocative melodies and trenchant lyrics, ‘My Name Is Suzie Ungerleider’ is the tenth solo studio album by the American-born, Canadian-raised artist revered for such landmark records as ‘Johnstown’, ’Sleepy Little Sailor’ and ‘A Girl in Teen City’. Now based once more in her hometown of Vancouver, the album was made with producer Jim Bryson (Kathleen Edwards, Kalle Mattson, Skydiggers), whose assured touch amplifies the atmospheric dreamscapes contained in Suzie’s reflective, intimate songbook.
The decision to say “so long” to her long-time moniker Oh Susanna represents her recognition that the “exciting, dark, funny, charming” character that she thought was Oh Susanna was actually Suzie Ungerleider (pronounced Unger-lye-der) all along. “So here I am, leaving behind the trappings of a persona that gave me the courage to climb up onstage and reveal what is in my heart,” she reflects. “It once protected me, but I need to take it off so I can be all of who I am.”
The name change is both a personal and political decision, fuelled by her realisation that ‘Oh Susanna,’ the Stephen Foster song of 1848, contained racist imagery and a belief system that she wanted no part of. She came to understand its historic associations to Minstrelsy, a tradition both demeaning and dehumanising to black people. Leaving Oh Susanna behind, she’s become her true self with a wonderful record that marks a fresh beginning, a collection of new compositions that refresh and redefine who Suzie Ungerleider is.
Connect with Suzie HERE