Susan Christie - Paint a Lady (Finders Keepers, 1969)

Voilà une pépite qui a déjà fait plusieurs fois le tour de la blogosphère depuis sa résurrection en 2006, que je poste pour les deux retardataires qui seraient passé entre les goutes. Pour la petite histoire, Susan Christie était une jeune femme de Philadelphie à qui CBS avait fait signer un contrat, pensant tenir là une future vedette. En recevant ses chansons, le label déchanta : refus, pas de disque, fin de l'histoire. Quelques copies pressées à titre privée circulèrent heureusement, jusqu'à ce que Finders Keepers les exhume. Le label nous parle de ''suburban folk songs'', de ''psychedelic country standards'' avec ''a beat heavy funk-folk rhythm section''. Oui, heavy funk-folk! Ajoutez un morceau long de 9 minutes et vous comprendrez mieux le rejet de CBS à l'époque. On s'éloignait trop du psych-folk que le label voulait vendre. Aujourd'hui, loin d'une banale collection de maquettes on découvre un album enchanteur. Avec une pointe de tristesse aussi, en pensant à tous les autres disques qu'elle aurait pu nous offrir si elle avait persévéré. Même si je peux la comprendre : travailler deux ans sur des chansons pour s'entendre dire que non, ce n'est pas assez commercial, il y a de quoi vous dégoûter de l'industrie du disque.

Susan Christie
Paint a Lady
CD Finders Keepers FKR007CD (UK, 1969 - reissued 2006)

01. Rainy Day
02. Paint a Lady
03. For the Love of a Soldier
04. Ghost Riders in the Sky
05. Yesterday, Where's my Mind?
06. Echo in your Mind
07. When Love Comes
08. No One Can Hear You Cry

Note : Recorded at Sigma Sound, Philadelphia. Jon Hill Music 1969.
The material on this album, heard by few until it was issued on CD in the early 21st century, might have been built up as a little weirder than it is by some of the collectors who've raved about it. While it's not the most uplifting stuff in the world, much of it is haunting but not all that out-there pop-folk. Susan Christie's fairly strong, strident vocals and moody melodies, occasionally embellished by strings, aren't the most uncommercial mixture that could have been concocted, though apparently they were too uncommercial to find release when they were originally recorded. What is unusual -- and what sets it most apart from some singers she might bear the vaguest of resemblance to at times, like Melanie, Tim Buckley, Sandy Denny, and Bobbie Gentry -- are the unexpectedly forceful distorted guitars, near-hard rock organ, and angular rhythms and mild dissonance used in some of the arrangements. In addition, for an eight-song, half-hour album, it's certainly unpredictable in the wide territory it covers -- "No One Can Hear You Cry," unlike anything else on the record, is close to sounding like a fine lost Dionne Warwick outtake, though even that gets set aside from the usual Bacharach/David production by the insertion of off-the-wall exotic tinkles of descending instrumental glissandos. If that's not odd enough in this company, there's also a cut, "When Love Comes," that's not too far off early Marianne Faithfull at her best. In contrast, "Yesterday, Where's My Mind?" is freaky at the outset, with its pummeling, tumbling drum breaks, creepy organ, and trippy ominous whisper-to-a-scream recitation, but even that track settles back into a relatively conventional song after three minutes. "For the Love of a Soldier" is another standout, managing to mix affecting antiwar folk-rock with a funky hard rock chorus quite effectively. Though Christie's not quite a major talent based on these relics, this is nicely dreamy and varied folk-rock for the most part that shows a lot of sadly unfulfilled potential, and if it's more downbeat than the norm for the genre, it's hardly gloomy. (All Music Guide)

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