Sue Garner – To Run More Smoothly
Striking a balance between Patti Smith and Gillian Welch, Sue Garner’s solo debut is the sleeper of this early year. Its soothing strains and subtle craft will surprise those familiar with Garner’s abrasively noisy band Run On (and Fish and Roses before that), while the seductive intimacy with which she insinuates herself under the skin of a song transcends the generic cliches of both alternative rock and alternative country. Whatever one labels it, the album is a testament to the power of artistic understatement — music without guile or pretense, transparent in its emotional purity.
The album sounds like a homespun affair, home in this case being Garner’s Manhattan apartment and co-producer Chris Stamey’s studio in Chapel Hill. From the lilting melodicism of the album-opening “Nightfall” through the heartbreakingly lovely cover of Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Dear Darling” and the minimalist rock of “Rose Colored Glue” and “Box And You”, the album’s every musical step is so deft that by the time it arrives at the funereal deconstruction of Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings”, the listener is willing to follow Garner anywhere.
While Garner is plainly an intelligent artist, there’s a warmth to even the most cerebral songcraft here, a soul-satisfying depth of feeling that never settles for mere cleverness. With one foot in Appalachia and the other in NYC, her artistry is sufficiently expansive to merit a category all its own.