Cannonball Jane - Street Vernacular

  by Tommy Gunnarsson

published: 17 / 11 / 2005

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Review

Things are not what they seem to be when it comes to Sharon Hagopian. To some students at a school in Brooklyn, New York, she is known as their music teacher, but to people outside that school, she is better known as Cannonball Jane. Using that name, she writes, performs and records all her songs by herself at home. 'Street Vernacular' is her debut album and was originally released some years ago via her website. Now, English label Fortuna Pop! has decided to re-release the record, with some remastering and an added bonus track, 'Breaker Breaker'. According to her website, she has a fan in Kathleen Hannah of Bikini Kill/Le Tigre fame, and listening to songs like 'Brave New World', that doesn’t surprise me at all. This is a very varied album, with lots of different styles being tried out during the eleven songs. “Hey! Hey! Alright” sounds like a cross between the just mentioned Le Tigre and Helen Love. Opening track, 'Slumber Party', would suit fine a St Etienne album and suddenly Moby pops into my head while listening to 'Add a Wrap'. To tell you the truth, I’m not very fond of the shouting singing style of Kathleen Hannah, so the tracks here that sound that way, I prefer to skip, but there are some really good pop songs here, and you can’t be anything else than impressed by the talents of Miss Hagopian. I get the feeling that she likes to experiment a lot while recording in her little studio at home, so it will be nice to what she comes up with on the next record.

Track Listing:-

1 Slumber Party
2 Hey! Hey! Alright!
3 Such Is The Score
4 Breaker Breaker
5 Taxi
6 Add A Wrap
7 Fine Remindrer
8 Brave New Word
9 Automatic Knockout
10 Let's Go
11 The Force Of Gravity

Label Links:-

http://www.fortunapop.com/
https://twitter.com/fortunapop
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fortuna