Consumer Guide Album

Ferron: Testimony [Philo, 1982]
It sure isn't her male backup that gives this Canadian the edge on her pastoral-lesbian sisters in the U.S.A.--the Olivia collective could duplicate these modestly imaginative folk-rock arrangements and maybe even think them up. But Ferron's natural musicianship is something special: the light, grainy, "halfway pretty" mezzo glances off sweet-and-sour words and melodies with a fetching ease that's never laid-back. And given the utopian burden of so much "women's music," an old sinner like me is reassured by all the grief she cops to. A-