SKYWAY BRIDGE
PASSENGER 24
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YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU
Some dream of marrying the girl next door. Others fantasize about one wild night with her in the back of daddys car. At first glance, Melissa is the perfect object of both desires: classically demure in a pink cashmere sweater, until a blood red bra strap suddenly leaps from her shoulder. Shes the type of girl to which youd entrust all of your worldly possessions, giving her the keys to your house, the keys to your car, only to discover later that she tore the roof off one and disappeared for days in the other. Fairy tales are made of girls like these; or in Melissas case, re-written by them.
Thumbalinas one night stand is the first of its kind. This album is a collection of dark fables for the soul, where love haunts solitude and fantasy trumps reality. By unflinchingly internalizing pop music sensibilities, Melissa carefully maps out the landscape within us. She explores the rules on the inside, for it is there where most rules are broken.
Never begrudging us our bearings or herself tradition, Melissas music and lyrics both sooth and comfort us. She has the utmost respect for the forms of expression she has chosen, and lovingly buckles us in for the ride. Nevertheless, we are mysteriously transported someplace entirely unexpected, yet always a sacred place we were somehow meant to go.
Thumbalina is not entirely Melissas tale. It belongs to all those who have flirted with would be disaster, taken a left turn instead of a right, inhaled so deeply that cracks become roads and slipping becomes strutting. It also belongs to the visionaries that came together to make it so: her right hand man, producer and guitar extraordinaire Luke Doucet; stellar players, Rick May and Paul Brennan; engineering by Andre Wahl; additional production by Jeff Trott & mixing by Greg Collins; and the icing on the cake, guest appearances by Greg Keelor (Blue Rodeo), Justin Rutledge, and Sarah McLachlan.
With this album Melissa McClelland has risen as the avant-garde mistress of inner pop noire. Sometimes purgatorial, other times ephemeral, she is both poet and pioneer. She never flinches at the ugly, never falters at the undone. Instead, she continually rises, one minute the vixen, the next apple pie.
A dark feline beauty in a spotless white summer dress in the deepest of southern romances on the coldest of winter nights, Melissa is a heroine you will not be able to get out of your mind.
