November 2011

Story: Lenny Stoute

Say you turned down a hidden street in a strangely familiar city you’ve never been in before, following raucous Twenties blues tinged with the sad strain of Appalachia. You follow the music swirling with the smoke into a club looks like home base for time travellers. Burning through the haze onstage a sultry woman with knowing eyes and a slash of scarlet for a moth and a voice for the ages, from the ages. So you surrender to the slippery sound worming itself inside your brain and time slips and the faces around you in vintage dresses and fedoras give no clue as to what time it is, even when time it is.

Such is the sonic world of Little Miss Higgins and you’d best be aware it’ll suck in and flush you out a believer. It’s been like that since the age of four, when Jolene Higgins’ daddy brought home a piano and encouraged his wee daughter to bang away at it. “It was a mini grand piano. He brought it home and told me it was mine. I carved my name in the side and started taking piano lessons.”

As with most of the breed, in her teens Higgins switched to guitar and started playing rock’n’roll. Until she caught the blues infection off a local radio station and fell under the spell of great blues ladies like Memphis Minnie and Billie Holiday,

Jaimie Vernon



Carole Pope
Landfall
Independent


Up until the late ‘70s Canadian female artists were represented by Middle of the Road sweetness-and-light or Country cross-overs like Anne Murray and Carroll Baker; most were phenomenal vocalists, but not artistic trailblazers.

Then punk kicked at the darkness until it bled razorblades and women became empowered enough to lead from the crotch. Several rallied to be Queen of the Outrage like Michaele Jordana from The Poles, The B-Girls, and The Curse.

But it took Carole Pope (fronting the band she co-founded with Kevan Staples called Rough Trade) to marry subterfuge with commerce and create the groundwork for sexual revolution and equality in an industry dominated by the good ole boys.  Hell, King-of-the-Canadian Playboys Greg Godovitz of Goddo was so intimidated by her he wrote her a song.

And as the next wave came and went, Jane Siberry, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Dalbello, Pope took no quarter. A relentless string of hits through the ‘80s has left her views on sex, religion and the body politic unrivaled in the mainstream [yeah, I’m pointing at you Madonna and Lady GaGa]. 

Even with Rough Trade long gone, Pope has continued pushing her own envelopes through the last two decades, including a warts-and-all autobiography. So here we are six years after her last ambient/trance/urban/rock solo effort, ‘Transcend’, and it can be said that she has not capitulated.