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Title: Bound By the Beauty
By: Siberry, Jane
Released by: Reprise
Released on: 1989
Rating (out of 10): 8
Date: 07/18/2001

Pronounced "SIB-bur-ee"

My God. You wanna talk about rediscovering an artist? I found myself on a big Jane Siberry kick last year, 5 years after I first fell in love with her.

An old boyfriend made me a tape of Siberry's When I Was a Boy album back in college. I loved the tape so much I ran out and bought several more Siberry albums, my favorite of which was Bound By the Beauty.

Then we broke up, and one day when I needed a blank cassette, I taped over the one he gave me. I was going through that post-breakup phase when friends advised me to get rid of everything that reminded me of the guy—his photos, his gifts, etc.

Serves me right for listening to my friends. (Dumbasses.)

Not too long after that, I found myself in a very brief rebound relationship with someone who had terrible taste in music. I tried to educate him by loaning him Jeff Buckley's Grace and Jane Siberry's Maria (two of my favorite albums at the time). We broke up, and although he promised on many occasions to return those CDs to me, he never did. I replaced Grace, and held off on getting another Maria.

My next boyfriend hated Siberry. Hated her. Too Canadian, too hippie-dippie, I dunno. He wasn't too into female singers. And, dutiful girlfriend that I was, I let my Siberry servitude lapse almost completely.

That relationship bit the dust, and having lost more CDs and books than I cared to count, I swore never to loan anything of any sentimental value to anybody ever again.

When I eventually stumbled upon a used copy of Maria, I knew it would be the beginning of my Siberry renaissance. I dusted off my Bound By the Beauty CD, and wasn't able to stop listening to it for quite some time.

Bound By the Beauty, from 1989, is one of the best albums to come out of the Canadian country-folk genre. Siberry owes many of her vocal tics to Joni Mitchell (particularly on the track "Hockey," in which Siberry's voice refuses to stay in one octave for more than a couple of bars at a time), and her instrumental settings here remind me of Kate and Anna McGarrigle. There's lots of piano and accordion, and plenty of harmonies, and that makes me happy, I tell ya.

What makes Siberry unique is her lyrics. They can be endearingly Dadaist or gratingly quirky, depending on whom you ask. I've been on both sides of the fence, and I've decided that the woman is a poet, an explorer. Siberry gets so caught up in the moment—the feeling—of what she's singing, she often eschews accepted syntax and dives headlong into the mystic (Van Morrison reference fully intended):

And first I'm gonna find a forest
And stand there in the trees
And kiss the fragrant forest floor
And lie down in the leaves
And listen to the birds sing
The sweetest sound you'll hear
And everything the dappled
Everything the birds
Everything the earthness
Everything the verdant
The verdant
The verdant
The verdant green.

—from "Bound By the Beauty"


"Everything Reminds Me of My Dog" is little more than a laundry list ("The way it takes us so long to choose a perfect table reminds me of my dog") with a few gems thrown in ("Artists remind me of my dog/Staking out originality on the nearest tree"; "Old folks remind me of my dog/My dog reminds old folks of their dogs"). Corny, sure, but it's so over-the-top that it surprises you with its wit.

Certain songs, like "The Valley," just arrest you, leave you in a zone of humbled appreciation:

The valley is dark
The burgeoning holding
The stillness obscured by their judging
You walk through the shadows
Uncertain and surely hurting
Deserted by the blackbirds
And the staccato of the staff
And though you trust the light
Towards which you wend your way
Sometimes you feel all that you wanted
Has been taken away
You will walk
You will walk
You will walk in good company.


Siberry's voice is—must be—a classical instrument. If she's ever breathy, it's for effect. There are times on Bound By the Beauty when she's hovering comfortably in first soprano for minutes, never having to screech or force the notes out. There are times when she could throw her alto vibrato to the back of the Metropolitan Opera House without any amplification.

Despite such formalism, her personal nuances always shine through—her little laughs; her Canadian pronunciations ("fawrest," "stacaaaato"); her schizophrenic, sultry scat-singing between established lyrics.

Yes, I am back under Jane Siberry's spell, and will happily remain under such exotic hypnosis. I've finally bought When I Was a Boy on CD, and I've sworn on a stack of All Music Guides that I will never loan Siberry's album out for "educational purposes."


© Copyright CultureDose.com 07/18/2001

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