Suzanne’s View: When you’re an artists whose music is steeped in simple acoustic strumming and diary-like lyrics, there’s a danger of becoming too comfortable in a niche that doesn’t demand much more than occasional replication. It’s a challenge for such artists to stay fresh. Quite frankly, most don’t. Fortunately, Suzanne Buirgy did.
We first encountered this Los Angeles folk/rocker via her stellar 1998 recording A Small Word. We were struck by her raw intensity. her lyrics dug deep, while her melodies were unshakeably infectious. Several years later, we still listen to it actively. Albums like that are hard for an artist to top. But that’s exactly what Buirgy does with The View From Here.
Once again, she strives to give the listener more than merely a handful of dewy-eyed tales of love in its various forms and stages. She successfully aims to infuse empathy and honesty in her material. In short, you believe every word that comes out of her mouth. There are moments, actually, when she even seems to be betraying herself, sharing almost too much. The pleading “Undertow” feels more like an internal whisper — the kind of words that you might say to yourself in an emotional moment, but words that you’d never say out loud.
On the flip side, Buirgy also gets in touch with her inner rocker. Although it’s framed by a simple acoustic arrangement, “Simple Things” begs to be fleshed out as a full-tilt electrical anthem. It has a riotous, fist-waving chorus that urges the artists to belt until her vice shreds to a sexy rasp. And speaking of sex, she oozes it on “Experience,” and old-school blues number that will probably explode in a live setting.
The View From Here was produced by Buirgy with Judy Wieder. For more information, check out the artist’s web site (suzannebuirgy.com)
