shannon mcardle - summer of the whore

McArdle comes out swinging on the first song on this, her debut solo album: “Don’t have to be so careful / Honey I don’t live in town / Don’t have to tell me you love me, baby / I’ll still go down.” As you can see, what’s got everyone in a tizzy is the rather frank lyrics that she throws around, including these from “Leave Me For Dead”: “You’d like to wash my fresh mouth out / Shove in a big bar of soap / But you know that I always swallow / I let it slide down my throat.” There’s plenty more confessional writing on this album, centered around her breakup with former Mendoza Line bandmate Timothy Bracy and the subsequent sadness, rebounding, and apparent loss of a baby. Needless to say, it’s not particularly uplifting. The only problem is that McArdle doesn’t demonstrate the musical chops to back up the lyrics. This is a serious album about the painful aftermath of a breakup, but I don’t hear a lot of emotion coming from the rather bland music that McArdle puts behind her words. The music has been described as “hypnotic,” which I see as just another way of saying “boring.” While the lyrics are the star of the album, McArdle’s songwriting skills seem to be lacking without Bracy. This would have worked much better as simply a book of poetry.