Mary Lou Lord
Got No Shadow (Work)
by Marc Hirsh
Mary Lou Lord
Got No Shadow (Work)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Spring 1999
There's a fine line between invaluable collaborator and svengali. Ben Mink (k. d. lang), Patrick Warren (Michael Penn), Jon Brion (damn near everybody, including Aimee Mann and Fiona Apple) all share an implicit understanding that their job is to make the other person sound good. No matter how important their contributions or how much they shape the sound, they all ultimately act in a supporting role.
That's not always the case, though, and you need look no further than Mary Lou Lord's latest album, Got No Shadow, to see what happens when the sideman ends up controlling the project. Nick Saloman, Mr. Bevis Frond himself, plays a lot of guitar and contributes an equal number of songs as the star does, and his grubby little fingerprints end up all over Ms. Lord's music. In fact, he contributes more to the proceedings than Lord does: despite the countless pictures of Lord in street performance with her acoustic guitar, all she does is sing, with Saloman and others (including ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn, Oscar nominee Elliot Smith and, there he is again, Jon Brion) taking up the slack.
And so Lord takes a secondary role on her own album. Songs that should probably be based around light instrumentation supporting Lord's high and thin voice are instead smothered by Saloman's electric guitar, which is a shame, because there's definitely potential for some great music here. The Byrds quote that opens up "Some Jingle Jangle Morning" turns out to be the only obvious (and lame) part of the song, which barrels along like Liz Phair's crunchier (PG-rated) dreams. "His Lamest Flame" is easily the highlight of the album, with its jangly drive, exuberant lyricism and vocal hook, but it's curiously flat and subdued. Most of the rest of the album has the same compressed sound to it, which seems unfair to Lord, since most of the obvious clunkers, especially lyrically, tend to be Saloman's songs (or collaborations, so I'll still blame him).
It's telling that one of the album's high points is the folk standard "Shake Sugaree." With just Elliot Smith's acoustic guitar backing her up, Lord finally comes into her own, playful and sad at the same time. It is, of course, the only song without Saloman on the album. Lord on her own could probably make an appealing cross between Shawn Colvin (one of her heroes, who sings backup on the closing "Subway") and a streetwise Victoria Williams. Instead, she comes across as a post-grunge street-corner Suzi Quatro, acting on the orders of her puppetmaster.