Acclaimed songwriter Oh Susanna (aka Suzie Ungerleider) is excited to share a new music video for “Thunderbird” from her latest album, A Girl In Teen City, a record that traverses to the most personal place yet: a conjured, vivid past, searching for identity in Vancouver in the 1980s.
The album track “Thunderbird” was inspired Ungerleider’s friend Dave, who was “the first person I knew who bought his own car,” she says. “He spent around $900 on a black hard top 1968 Thunderbird. He worked as a busboy and it took him months to save enough money to buy it. Turns out this car had a rusty underbelly and was totally unsafe to drive so the car sat abandoned until it was towed away by the city after we all left Vancouver to attend college. Cars are, of course, a metaphor for freedom, youth, adventure and virility. The car also could represent Vancouver itself, beautiful on the outside but rusted out and dangerous on the inside.”
A Girl In Teen City reunites Ungerleider with producer Jim Bryson. The pair collaborated on her previous release Namedropper, an album featuring the songs of Canada’s top songwriters written specifically for Oh Susanna to interpret. This time, with the urging by her friend and co-conspirator, Bryson, she embarked on a time machine to visit her teenage self in a sleepy port town that she thought no one had ever heard of.
From cheeky rock pop to quietly beautiful love songs, A Girl In Teen City reflects Oh Susanna’s songwriting breadth. Her brilliant vocals float through the sensuous instrumentation to create a cinematic soundscape. The album finds Ungerleider working with longtime friends and musicians Eli Abrams on bass, Cam Giroux on drums, Gord Tough on guitar, and Jim Bryson on guitar and keyboards. Guest harmony vocalists include Holly McNarland, Gabrielle Giguere, Ungerleider’s sister Jessie and niece Sofia.
The JUNO Award nominated and Genie Award winning Canadian songstress began performing as Oh Susanna in the mid-1990s, crafting a persona that matched the timeless qualities of her music, sounds that drew from the deep well of early 20th Century folk, country and blues, yet rooted in her finely-honed storytelling skills.
