Eddi Reader: "Mirmama"
Fairground Attraction split after one platinum album, The First
Of A Million Kisses; Perfect, the sound of summer '88, was soundaliked
and killed by an Asda ad; and singer Eddi Reader's idiosyncratic
talent seemed to have been lost between there and here. However,
Mir Mama vindicates her commitment to the combined sparkle of
bright minds and acoustic instruments. With guitars picked prettily
by Kirsty MacColl's brothers Calum and Neill, and drums brushed
and slapped by former Fairgrounder Roy Dodds, the album is so
airy and fluent it's as if she'd only been gone for the afternoon.
Reader's particular strength is mixed emotions. She gets down
to those (autobiographical?) love-hurts songs with humour rather
than traditional singer-songwriterly despondency. For instance,
That's Fair is an internal argument between a woman's doormat
side accepting every imposition as, indeed, "fair", and a more
subversive inner voice, a sotto sample asking "Is it?", after
each self-abusing line. In Cinderella's Downfall it's male stereotyping
versus real woman again, and Cinders just won't wear it: "I'm
going round your house now/Gonna kick the door down/I feel like
Robert Mitchum/And I'm spinning you around". It's a rhapsodic
romantic comedy with the heroine not so much Mitchum as Cary Grant
made over into female flesh. While the best of her writing is
sharpened by a shrewd sense of fun and conflict, her singingﾊ- lead or back-upﾊ- lifts every track. Brilliantly conceived harmonies and countermelodies
enliven demanding lyrics on All Or Nothing and What You Do With
What You've Got. Oddly, the anticipated dippy hippy element emerges
only in a couple of coversﾊ- a sentimental John Prine song about old age called Hello In There
and Fred Neil's dimly philosophical Dolphins (notably recorded
by Tim Buckley and Billy Bragg). She's already much better than
that, an increasingly confident, tough and funny artist with no
need to hide behind whimsy or flakiness.
Rating: four stars (out of five)
Reviewer: Phil Sutcliffe
from March '92 issue of Q