Serena Ryder has always been unpredictable, but never more so than with her latest recording. While most singer-songwriters wait until the twilight of their careers to cover other writers’ songs, Ryder decided to do so with her major label debut.
If Your Memory Serves You Well covers vintage Canadian songs, some written more than 70 years before the 23-year-old musician was born. It’s a daring move, but she pulls it off, putting her own stamp on all 12 covers. In the process, she shows old hacks like Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow that covers don’t have to be uninspired knock-offs of the originals.The choices here bounce all over the place, from Leonard Cohen’s Sisters of Mercy to old nuggets like Ed McCurdy’s 1949 anti-war anthem, I Had the Strangest Dream, the latter sounding as relevant today as the day it was written.
The album only offers glimpses of Ryder’s three-octave range. However, the power of her voice soars through many of these songs. Blues and jazz standards are revisited as well — Bonnie Dobson’s (Take Me For a Walk In the) Morning Dew and Shelton Brooks’ Some of These Days, for example, are injected with Ryder passion and conviction.The best here, perhaps, is her rendition of Percy Faith’s My Heart Cries for You, previously recorded by Ray Charles and Ben E. King.
The 15-song album closes with three of Ryder’s own tunes: Just Another Day, a declaration of self-determination, Weak at the Knees, a heart-wrenching confessional number, and Out of the Blue, an infectious love song Ryder co-wrote with Randy Bachman.There’s also a hidden track, a recording Ryder made of Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be the Day when she was only seven. A few lucky people caught this dynamic performer in an intimate setting at the now-defunct Costello’s on Abbott in Kelowna a few years ago. Many more saw her opening for Bachman and Cummings at Prospera Place last summer.
Have no doubt, the next time she comes to Kelowna she’ll headline her own show.
By Andre Wetjen
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