In praise of... Miss America by Mary Margaret O'Hara

Is apartment hunting any good?

did you relisten to miss america, dr. c? when i hear her sing it is as if i am in quicksand. i lose the grip to the earth and i love it. there is no way i cannot listen to her voice even if the music is played in the background.

It's often the one I loan out first to sell friends on her.

One question-her previous group Go Deo Chorus had a demo tape floating around the major labels from late 70's-1983. Has anyone heard it or know if there's any word of it appearing in any format (i can't get slsk but can get access)?

finally found this, got a nice vinyl copy for only $4 yesterday...

really interesting record, a bit different than i thought it would be....

but yeah dreamy and diffuse, her vocal style is really something.

this sort of seems like the missing link between kate bush and hejira-era joni mitchell, or something.

there was an interview with joe boyd recently in tapeop and he talked about this album, which I didn't realize he'd engineered/mixed for the most part; even though michael brook is credited for it, apparently he just barely touched tapes boyd did several years earlier.

yeah he's in the thank you list, but not credited as an engineer

Some MMO'H on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQbAr1DCjYw

I had never heard of her before reading this thread but I like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z14wPTz6PdY&mode=related&search=

Some dude on youtube has put a bunch of her songs to Lost montages for some reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_2j1fjBiFU&mode=related&search=

People are weird.

that Joe Boyd interview in TapeOp (issue No. 60, July/Aug 2007) was great, tons of details about recording this album & working with O'Hara, and how when she started to stress the details he left the album to her and left Toronto to go do the third R.E.M. record. a follow-up letter in this month's TapeOp (I forget who from) provides further detail, evidently a few of the tracks were definitely re-recorded, and the way it was mixed definitely sounds more like a glossy digital Brook production, I wish Boyd could have stayed to finish though it sounds like Mary is a quite the taskmaster

2006 song for a Hal Willner comp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oflj8G2eGz0&mode=related&search=

& she played ATP in London in 2007, there were three or four youtube clips that have been removed. one's still left but it doesn't give you the entire story

i like this, it looks like someone made a weird animation and put it to her music....her vocals on this really remind me of what i've heard of john jacob niles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oflj8G2eGz0&mode=related&search=

ooops duplicate sorry

it's ok

last year when I discovered that new MMOH song (during my customary bi-monthly search to watch the 'Night Music' youtube clip linked upthread) I woke up the other MMOH thread to note it, and it sank right to the bottom while this stupid Norah Jones thread kept bouncing around the top. So I checked the Norah Jones thread and it was filled with about 20 people talking about how bland it was and how depressing it was that there weren't any good singers currently releasing music.

A mutual friend brought her to a show that I played in Toronto a few years ago and we went out for a bit afterwards, and that's probably my favorite brush-with-fame-through-playing-music moment.

Went out to a party, not went-out went-out.

GLORIOUS

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=vQbAr1DCjYw

It's just some jerk to it, j-jerk to it.

from an article where several current writers talk about their favourite songwriters in the wake of the Dylan Nobel prize
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/05/bob-dylan-nobel-favourite-songwriter

Mary Margaret O’Hara by Lavinia Greenlaw

An impression of distillation and deep thought … Mary Margaret O’Hara Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer

When I was 19 and newly in the grip of writing, I joined a band. Asked to produce lyrics, I intensified my poems. Perhaps I thought that they could be freeze-dried and then rehydrated with a tune. The results were ungainly. Good singer-songwriters must have an extra layer of judgment that enables them to see what most of us need to be shown. Mary Margaret O’Hara is best known for Miss America (1988), and has released just one album since.

O'Hara builds songs out of spare phrases that light each other as the parts of a poem should

She builds songs out of spare phrases that light each other as the parts of a poem should. She sings this way too, as if making a series of gestures which have taken their time to become clear. You get the impression of distillation and deep thought in the making of songs that resist their own weight: “You just want to push somebody / And a body won’t let you. Just want to move somebody / And a body won’t let you.” O’Hara resists stabilisation, something I understood when I saw her perform live. She has a decisive but off-kilter way of moving – a lurch, a flick of the hand, a foot stamp that are impossible to relate to what you’re hearing. It’s as if she has a sense of detail so latent that no one else can detect it. Her lyrics are published in brief lines full of quiet swerves: “So sorry if I can’t stop pretending / So sorry if I don’t let you go / Like this but not like this is ending / I think you know. / I think you know. / Help me lift you up.” They can be heartbreaking in their generosity.

• A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde by Lavinia Greenlaw is published by Faber.

had never heard this record before but laura snapes' sunday review of it was excellent https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mary-margaret-ohara-miss-america/

so now "body's in trouble" is really doing me in

oh Brad I'm surprised you never heard it, it's really a one of a kind record and seems like something you would really love

I'm similarly shocked! prob the best album Toronto ever produced

Other than The Trinity Session, that is.

She's on the new Fucked Up record!

Barely. She's in there somewhere. But it's good anyway.