Excerpt of Review for New Wild Everywhere, Great Lake Swimmers
Another wonderful record from the soft-voiced Tony Dekker and his Great Lake Swimmers, an outfit that now includes the sweet secret weapon of Canadian roots music, the harmonist and violinist Miranda Mulholland.
The Roaring Girl Cabaret deliver a spicy mix of jazz, classical, opera and folk with an overall sound that walks the line between traditional and contemporary. It's an admirable balancing act. Ringleader, vocalist, violinist and lyricist Miranda Mulholland is the driving force behind this quartet, and her opera-trained voice lilts and soars over original compositions mixed with a few covers such as Kate Bush's "Army Dreamers," traditional folk number "Sweet By And By" and the famous Carmen aria, "L'Amour Est Un Oiseau Rebelle" (a.k.a. "Habanera"). The deck is stacked with a handful of guest appearances by the likes of Sarah Slean, John Dinsmore, Neville Quinlan (NQ Arbuckle) and Justin Rutledge. In Last Night's Party Clothes is a smart, sexy, sly and delicious debut.
Seeing them, (Great Lake Swimmers) full-band and not unplugged, at the beautiful Vogue Theatre in Vancouver definitely showed that there was much more to add to my already bountiful love for GLS. They brought along Miranda Mulholland, with her lovely voice and deadly fiddling. Watch out for this redhead, she not only stole the hearts and minds of all the men in the theatre (and most of the women), but also showed her chops during an extended jam-out of "Still" at the end of their set. In her own words, she really did "giv'er."
Girl power roar
Christened after the feisty heroine in The Roaring Girl, a comedy about sex, society and money written by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker in 1611, the Roaring Girl Cabaret is all about pushing boundaries and challenging stereotypes.
The book's based on the life of Mary Frith -- or Moll Cutpurse, as she was better known -- a notorious criminal who dressed as a man and preferred her freedom to marriage. Not surprisingly, Frith was looked down upon but she's also been lionized.
As a reviewer in England's Guardian newspaper wrote, "Middleton and Dekker may have romanticised Moll and turned her into the first criminal celebrity, but in creating a legend they also created a free-thinking, fearless, feminist role model and an enduring heroine for our times as much as theirs."
Miranda Mulholland describes the play's "roaring girl" as someone who went against social mores, wears pants, drinks, swears, reads and "is not interested in the usual housewifely duties. I liked the idea of a non-traditional woman."
And there's nothing traditional about the music on the band's CD, In Last Night's Party Clothes.
"It's part folk, part jazz, part classical," Mulholland says. "The classical backgrounds of all the members allow a virtuosity on each instrument in the group and our collective experiences in the Toronto music scene transposes it into the key of contemporary pop."
Oh, there's opera in there, too, and you'll hear instruments like the glockenspiel, Wurlitzer, banjo and accordion in the mix.
Comprising Mulholland, Jennifer Bryan, Adrienne Lloyd, and Robin Pirson, the group performs at the Cameron House for the next three Tuesdays.
If you're looking for further proof of their non-conformist sound, cue up their version of Kate Bush's Army Dreamers.
"I remember hearing Wuthering Heights for the first time while I was playing on a Celtic rock tour," Mulholland says. "I was pretty green in the pop culture arena and had really only heard classical music growing up. I believed that I could never sing 'pop' music with my opera-trained voice and hearing her was a revelation.
"Army Dreamers is a song that I feel is just still so sadly relevant," she adds "We recorded the album as the Bush administration was still soldiering on and completely aside from political opinion, I wanted to reiterate how war is just such a waste of potential.
"All these people who could be learning, having families, living childhood dreams..."
Considering the group's inspiration and the title of their album, I ask Mulholland if there's a theme being explored on the record.
"It's an exploration of where I've been and how it informs my musical style now," she says. "After opera school, I was on a short tour with Terry Woods (of The Pogues) and we were discussing the wide range of music that I was interested in -- baroque opera, jazz, folk, country and Celtic.
"I was lamenting that there was nothing tying them together to make any kind of cohesive album and he said, 'You're the element that ties it all together! Go write your own album,' and I did!"
The music on In Last Night's Party Clothes lends itself beautifully to intimate shows and yes, cabaret, and The Roaring Girl crew invest as much thought into the live show as they do in the music.
Mulholland says that the majority of the songs are based on "books, turbulent relationships and drinking" and are quite theatrical, adding that they also cover songs by Kurt Weill, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison.
"We have special guests sometimes who come and sit in on piano or trumpet and sometimes tap shoes," she says. "I believe that in these times it's important for an audience to feel that they've had an experience rather than just hear some music.
"We like to create an atmosphere and deliver something special."
Despite the frigid weather conditions, it was still a beautifully
romantic song for Valentine’s Eve, and gloves or not, Jim Cuddy and his
bandmates gave it the full treatment, expanding its musical scope with
expressive violin work from the flame-haired Miranda Mulholland and the
usual mind-boggling guitar wizardry from Colin Cripps.
The Roaring Girl Cabaret, In Last Night's Party Clothes, (Miranda Mulholland).
Mike Regenstreif
The Toronto-based Roaring Girl Cabaret, fronted by songwriter and classically-trained singer and violinist Miranda Mulholland, take their cues from the European cabaret traditions of artists like Bertolt Brecht and Jacques Brel; they have created a postmodern cabaret style that blends strains of classical, folk, country, jazz and rock into an appealing, idiosyncratic sound. These songs, and the Roaring Girls' approaches to them, will appeal to fans of Tom Waits or Rickie Lee Jones.
Miranda Mulholland plays a mean fiddle and possesses a voice similar in range to that of fellow Canadian folk-rock singer Pamela Morgan.