CD Review: Koala Motel - Anne McCue

by Tom Watson.

Koala Motel (2006, Messenger Records) is the latest album from Australia born and now Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter-guitarist Anne McCue. It was produced by McCue and Dusty Wakeman (Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam), who also serves as the bass player (and double bass on Track 3), and recorded at Mad Dog Studios in Burbank, California. Other players on the 12 tracks include Carl Byron (keyboards), and David Raven (percussion), with special vocal guests John Doe, Nancy Wilson (who plays mandolin on Track 3), Lucinda Williams, Will Courtney, Jim Lauderdale, and an appearance from Doug Pettibone on pedal steel guitar.

My introduction to Anne McCue is accidental. I navigate to her website while fact checking a recent interview of Janet Robin in which Robin mentions (page two) McCue as a guitarist to watch and that Robin co-wrote a track ("Driving Down Alvarado") on Koala Motel. I'm not a sympathetic singer-songwriter listener. Though publicists have aggressively pitched this style of music for a few years now, my attitude toward the hyphenated genre was summed up by a phrase from the Robin interview: "...whiny coffeehouse crap."

But as my browser loads McCue's website, "Bright Light of Day" from Koala Motel streams through the headphones and I'm infected.

Before I spoil your fun of stumbling upon this song, I urge you to give it a listen. While Messenger Records has allowed us to provide a full track on-demand stream, please note: It's been downsampled to 64 kbps to accomodate the Modern Guitars stream server and so doesn't represent the fidelity of the original CD.

"Bright Light of Day"

My first listen to "Bright Light of Day" is essentially without context, apart from the mentioned negative pre-disposition toward anything singer-songwriter-ish. But in the case of "Bright Light of Day", pre-packaged background isn't necessary. The music and lyrics deliver context enough.

30 seconds or so of McCue's song are all I need to play a movie in my mind. "Bright Light of Day" paints a scene and my imagination takes it from there. Song title and lyrics establish the central visual of a sunny morning and the mandolin (played, I find out later, by Nancy Wilson of Heart fame) says rural. More importantly, though, music and lyrics combine to create a strong emotional theme: bittersweet.

I came home from your bed
In the morning of a new day
I came home from your bed
On your pillow I'd laid my head

In my long dress, my high heels, my
fancy stockings
I was walking home from a long night...
In the bright light of day

Billboards lined the street
In the morning of that new day
Elections lost - holocaust
Through the mourning fog I made
my way

In my long dress, my high heels, my
fancy stockings
I was walking home from a long night...
In the bright light of day

Will you love me?
Will you dare?
When I see you again will I even care?
In the sunlight, through the air
There's a feeling of loss I could only bear
In the bright light of day

I came home from your bed
In the morning of a new day
I came home from your bed
On your pillow I'd laid my head

In my long dress, my high heels, my
fancy stockings
I was walking home from a long night...
In the bright light of day

--"Bright Light of Day" © 2006, Anne McCue

[Note the phrase "mourning fog" as opposed to "morning fog", a language delight I didn't catch until I read the lyrics.]

This isn't "whiny coffeehouse crap" from a naive college kid. This is an adult who knows how pleasure and pain often walk hand-in-hand - the bitter with the sweet.

The next song that streams at me from McCue's website is also a surprise. My ears still ring with Nancy Wilson's mandolin and suddenly I'm cruising for trouble on a rainy Los Angeles night with "Driving Down Alvarado" through its vibe mix of Jim Morrison's "L.A. Woman" and "Riders On the Storm" (listen for the Fender Rhodes-style arpeggiated chord at around 3:32).

"Driving Down Alvarado"

[Note: the same permission and downsampling remarks made in reference to "Bright Light of Day" apply to this stream.]

This is getting a little scary. The Doors' L.A. Woman album has always been my idea of Los Angeles at night, maybe of L.A., period. The McCue/Robin (the song's a co-write) lyrics hit home: "Take me down, down to the place where the monsters play. I give in, everything, everything, all the way." I'm also impressed by the fact that they chose Alvarado Street as opposed to boulevards Hollywood or Sunset.

The third Koala Motel song, "From Bakersfield To Saigon", streamed from the site is an earworm, though any use of language that unites Bakersfield, California, and Saigon, Vietnam, in the same sentence has my attention. You'll also hear, "From Campbelltown to Beirut," but Google had to tell me that Campbelltown is a city in Australia. I find out later it's where McCue was raised. I also discover that McCue has performed in Ho Chi Minh City.

Since this initial three song introduction to McCue, I've received the Koala Motel CD and done my homework. Turns out that she has a degree in film production and film studies, which, as I noted in my reaction to "Bright Light of Day", is put to good use in her music. McCue's discography includes Roll (2004, Cooking Vinyl); Amazing Ordinary Things (2003, Relentless); and, Live: Ballad of an Outlaw Woman (2003, self-released). She is also, like Janet Robin, a Lilith Fair alumna.

Having now listened to the entire CD, I can say that whether the result of lyrics, music, or the combination thereof, there's a strong element of pleasant surprise throughout Koala Motel. McCue and Wakefield have a fine sense of musical whitespace on songs such as "Bright Light of Day", "Coming To You", and "Shivers", an accomplishment on an album essentially recorded "live" in the studio by McCue, Wakeman, Byron and Raven, where a temptation to fill the room with sound would have been understandable, but not as effective.

Koala Motel is a book of good stories well told. Pleasant surprises surface all the way through to the CD closer, the album's title track, an instrumental about which I'll simply say, think Quentin Tarantino and spaghetti Westerns. Though I'm not yet a singer-songwriter genre convert, Anne McCue (and my recent exposure to the music of Janet Robin) has made me open earred.
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Koala Motel Track Listing
1. Driving Down Alvarado
2. From Bakersfield To Saigon
3. Bright Light Of Day
4. Hellfire Raiser
5. Sweet Burden of Youth
6. Coming To You
7. Any Minute Now
8. Jesus' Blood
9. Shivers
10. As the Crow Flies
11. Lay Me Down
12. Koala Motel

Related Links
Anne McCue
Messenger Records (from whom you can purchase Koala Motel)

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