Here's a true story. I was living in Boston about five years ago and I stumbled upon Mary Lou Lord playing one of her now-infamous subway gigs on the platform at Park Street Station.
It was a good gig as subways go--Park St. was the changeover between the red and the green lines, a high foot-traffic area. She was belting out some song I can't remember right now--probably a Dylan or Leonard Cohen cover--and there was a hushed crowd gathered around her. Even back then, she was already commanding the sort of wide-eyed reverance normally reserved for people who have been around for years.
She finished her tune right about the time the subway arrived--both a convenience and a necessity as her little-girl voice and acoustic guitar could never have competed with the roaring din of the Boston subway--and everyone walked away whispering how she was going to be the next big thing.
I couldn't figure out why.
Five years later they're still whispering and I still can't figure out why. Her debut album for Sony's WORK label, Got No Shadow, is as unobtrusive a pop album as you'd probably expect from somebody who was routinely upstaged by trains every 3 to 5 minutes during her formative years. Her performance is tentative and passionless which in itself isn't a death-blow but would require the songwriting to carry the album and, in the case of Got No Shadow, it just isn't up to the task.
The songs here, many of which Lord co-wrote with former Bevis Frond frontman Nick Salomon, are pretty pop songs and nothing more. Even on her previous releases, Lord's songwriting was always more cute than good, with campy little verses that would make all the indie kids smile and snicker, and here she tries to drop the campiness and it's a mistake. Even the covers are a disappointment, with a fairly rote and uninspired version of Freedy Johnston's, "Lucky One" perhaps the album's most unnecessary track.
Lord has been quoted as half-apologizing for the bland nature of her music saying that "after years of playing in the streets and on subways, I can't pick and choose who's going to come down the steps. The stuff I sing about has to be universal enough for people to understand, and somewhat palatable." Well, Mary Lou, you're not in the subway anymore. What's your excuse now?
