TIME Canada Arts: Pick of the Week

By: Leigh Anne Williams

Posted Thursday, Mar. 16, 2006

Even Canadian women get the blues sometimes. But a couple of new CDs from two singer-songwriters let us hear how just good the blues can be, especially if you mix it up a bit with some generous borrowing from other genres.

Treasa Levasseur's Not a Straight Line is an eclectic melange of blues, jazz, funk, rock, and even a subtle note of country. Consistent throughout are Levasseur's fresh lyrics and mature storytelling. In Solitary Man, the most straightforward blues number on the CD, Levasseur sings of a man with "a hole in his heart about five miles wide." The singer would be his "sweet remedy," but the sad truth she tells us is that even though he says she's "so lovely, she could get a guy high," there's no rescuing him from his despair. In the title track, we meet a physicist and the lover who doesn't speak his language of numbers and infinity. A country song, Nickels and Dimes, introduces us to a woman trying to account for the cost of a love that isn't showing much return. "She wonders where all of the interest went/ She knows it won't break her, but it sure leaves a dent." Learn to Let Go is more philosophical than narrative, but who knew Buddhist thought had so much jazz and funk in it? The CD is an impressive achievement for the 32-year-old Torontonian, who spends her days traveling in a van full of instruments making house calls to teach music to children.

(The rest of the article is about Roxanne Potvin's The Way It Feels)

(View the Original Artical)