| Shannon McArdle (Dec.08 issue) |
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| Written by Steve Dollar | |
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Page 1 of 2  Crossing the LineShannon McArdle’s Got No Secrets To Conceal Some artists hide behind the scrim of creative license, contending that even the bloodiest confessions are the mere fabric of fictional conceit. Names are changed to protect the guilty. Catastrophic experiences are shared by imaginary characters. And everything else is coincidental. Bob Dylan, in his 2004 memoir, implied that his 1974 classic Blood on the Tracks, widely assumed to be about his divorce, was in fact based on Chekhov. It took less than half a pint of Belgian wheat beer to get the skinny from Shannon McArdle. By the time I sludge through the rain to our recent date at the Commonwealth bar in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, the singer-songwriter already has a significant jump on me, happily tippling a Heffeweisen as she sat at the booth closest to the joint’s most excellent indie-rock jukebox. Introductions are made, the evening wet shaken off, and a Stoli-O-and-Tonic later, I joined McArdle at her post. Her wheaty refreshment nearly depleted, she was more than ready to spill. The Athens-gone-to-Brooklyn performer had no qualms when she admitted that the tortured tales on her debut solo album, Summer of the Whore (Bar/None), are explicitly inspired by the unexpected collapse of her marriage during the winter of 2007. One day her husband of two years, Tim Bracy, with whom she had performed since 2000 as a member of the indie-rock outfit the Mendoza Line, up and left. To add injury to insult, McArdle was tripped on her way into a subway one day, took a plunge down the stairs, and was rushed to an emergency room. “I had a lump on my back the size of a watermelon,” she said. Luckily, it was only two herniated discs, not a broken back. But what could more aptly symbolize the feeling of “hitting bottom” than actually hitting bottom? Recording Summer of the Whore became a process of emotional exorcism and redemption. And, despite its provocative title, less an anthem to abandon than a rueful reminiscence. The idea came when Ms. McArdle, 31, and former Mendoza Line drummer Adam Gold, likewise newly single, began collaborating on tracks she had quickly written in the wake of the break-up. Afternoon meetings over margaritas would find “one if not both of us looking pretty rough,” McArdle said. “Adam came up with it first. He’d ask, ‘Were you a whore last night?’” McArdle, a native of Albany, Georgia who fell in with the Mendoza Line while attending the University of Georgia in Athens in the late 1990s, had a definitively Southern lilt to her voice and sat with a certain poise that would befit, say, a schoolteacher. As it turned out, she works two jobs as an instructor of English as second language. But the racy album title isn’t entirely a joke. “It makes sense when you listen to it,” she said. “It’s not derogatory or in your face. I was doing everything out of desperation, trying to feel somewhat secure and somewhat confident, somewhat content and somewhat preoccupied. I think it’s quite appropriate.” Stylistically, the album’s succinct song cycle rarely veers into nail-spitting Lucinda Williams territory, even though Ms. McArdle shares an affinity for country-rock textures and literary constructions. The melancholy undertow of the opening “Poison My Cup” could belong to an early ’70s MOR ballad. Meanwhile, the tasteful percussive accents, muted twang, and breathy upper-register choral notes of “Paint the Walls,” which is the album’s most direct song about suddenly living alone, could easily serve a jazz singer. “The record is not supposed to be nasty or even insulting,” McArdle, talking while some vintage punk rock blared from the jukebox, said. “Although there are moments of that. I don’t want revenge. I just wanted to make a record and this was the only thing I could conjure up. It’s not meant to be a slap in the face. It makes me very nervous that I made this record and it’s getting all this press and I think, oh, now I’m going to hear from him. I didn’t want that. I just wanted to make a record that came out as something very personal. This record is just all me. I don’t need to hide behind it.” Nonetheless, like such kindred spirits as Neko Case, Kelly Hogan or the Handsome Family, McArdle reached back into the mountain ballad tradition to find a relevant parable to convey her personal experiences. “That Night in June,” beyond the shimmer of its slow waltz tempo and McArdle’s dreamy vocals, is laced with horror. “It’s about a woman who was drowned by her true love,” she explained. “This man drowns his bride and goes on this journey of self-loathing, but it turns out he has no conscience and he’s just a murderer. The woman dies, but there’s a rebirth of all these incarnations of the woman.” |
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