Album Notes

Understandably, there will be those quick to include Mae Moore alongside such artists as Sarah McLachlan, Joni Mitchell, and Diana Krall. Yet in many ways, the acclaimed Canadian singer/songwriter stands apart, with a musica vision that remains steadfastly her own. Mae's soulful blend of rock, folk, and jazz carries a unique imprintur, unencumbered by imitative links to others. That was true in the beginning of her career, and is true today with IT'S A FUNNY WORLD, her Paras Recordings debut album and sixth overall.
Produced by Joby Baker, and written entirely by Mae, IT'S A FUNNY WORLD is a blend of old and new. In addition to performing seven new songs, Mae revisits four from the past, including two ("Red Clay Hills" and "Superstitious") from her 1990 debut album Oceanview Motel, and two others ("Bohemia" and "All I Can't Explain") from more recent recordings. "I wanted to give them a different, more acoustic treatment," says Mae of the remakes. "In the past, one of the things people have commented on was that my vocals have been buried in the mix, and one of my goals on this album was to make the vocals more present."
That she does, with a voice tempered by time and mellowed with experience. IT'S A FUNNY WORLD kicks off with the intimate title track (mixed by Greg Penny of k.d. lang fame), a seamless weave of jazz and pop recounting reconciliation between long-ago lovers. "I grew up listening to jazz," says Mae. "I love jazz because it's so unpredicatble." The gentle waltz "Last Time" is a wry meditation on the drive to couple up, while "All I Can't Explain" proves a spirited catalogue of the heart's little mysteries. With her churning guitar and scatting vocal, Mae skillfully combines folk and jazz idioms in "Who Knows," a lush uptempo ballad about love's misdirected ways, while the bass and ambient strings of "Love Will Bring You Back" and the melancholy "The Reckoning" lend added sweetness and light to her beautiful melodies.
The droning sitar, tabla, and ambling half-spoken verses of "Red Clay Hills" and "Bohemia" make them two of the album's strongest tracks, the first being about the vanishing wildness of Canada's Prince Edward Island. "It's about questioning all this so-called progress," says Mae. "Bohemia" is a swirling cityscape about self-discovery, seemingly more dreamed than sung. The clever key changes and sassy piano/sax intro of "All I Have" make this one of Mae's more jazz-flavoured songs. "It was influenced by Wayne Shorter's song 'Ana Maria,'" notes Mae. "Only Man On Coney Island" is a straight-up jazz piece based on a true story about a man from Prince Edward Island who left to caretake Coney Island, while "Superstitious," with it's organ flourishes and elegant choral harmonies, offers a bemused voice from a star-crossed lover down on her luck.