ALBUM REVIEW on Songwriters Square

New Releases

Jane Bolduc – “Real Live Girl”
by Steve Wagner

The title track of Jane Bolduc’s new CD might be the sexiest, most swaggerin’ protest song ever written. Over a groove that’s part Stones and part amped-up new country, she takes a stand for authentic—if imperfect—feminine beauty: “Don’t want collagen / won’t inject no restylane…don’t want silicone / thank you, but I’ll keep my own…I’m here to reveal the appeal of a real live girl.”

In the liner notes for the disc she admits that it’s a song “for me and every woman who has ever doubted her self worth, lamented her wrinkles, her quirks or her convictions.”

Even though I’m a guy, it’s refreshing to hear somebody give the finger (however politely) to the Photoshopped/cosmetically altered…thing that’s considered beauty these days. If enough women over the age of 30 hear it, “Real Live Girl” could become their anthem.

More than just the title song, “Real Live Girl” is the mission statement of this collection: the girl is a fighter but a vulnerable one, flawed in love but never giving up. And rather than filling out the collection with random songs, Bolduc has chosen material that supports that mission and gives Real Live Girl thematic unity.

On “Missionary,” she faces a fixer-upper lover she couldn’t fix and admits her own misplaced benevolence. It’s the kind of powerful metaphor most songwriters would kill to come up with, delivered over a dark and soulful mid-tempo groove.

She reveals a lack of “player radar” while confronting said player in “Benefit of the Doubt,” which she reveals in the liner to be “a cautionary tale” about online dating and “a lesson in learning to trust my instincts.”

Elsewhere, she shows the rebel spirit, ripping the monotony of domestic stability in “Renegade Heart” (which swaggers like a motherf—well…it really swaggers) and delivering the ultimatum to an indecisive partner in “Restless” (also a swampy swagger-master).

Through it all, Bolduc never comes off as bitter, just wiser, and still holding on to a faith in real love, as she does in the disc’s ballads: “Casablanca” (another fine metaphor), the poetic “Please Don’t Say Goodbye” and the gospel-tinged country rock of “How Do I Get There from Here?”

I could write 1,000 more words about it but suffice to say, Real Live Girl is songwriting in the golden singer-songwriter tradition (she includes a lovely rendition of “Both Sides Now”), arranged and performed with grit and heart. (And did I mention that swagger?)

Listen to Real Live Girl HERE.
(I think this album is great too! Kinda sounds like Jane Petty and the Heartbreakers! – BB)