Bio
Suzie Cue
is a tiny lady, but don’t let appearances fool you. It would be easy to expect
some softly strummed major chords and a mere whisper of a voice, politely
asking you to love her. You’d be disappointed. Sure, she seems to practically
disappear behind her acoustic guitar before she gets going—just skinny arms and
a bubbly yet sarcastic demeanor--but then she begins to play, and it becomes
very clear that whatever you were expecting was most definitely wrong. What you
get is a thick guitar sound reminiscent of Ani DiFranco’s mid-‘90s heyday mixed
with a voice that moves between solid and huge. “Yeah, the most common feedback
I get after a gig is ‘I kept trying to figure out where that voice was coming
from. Where you hiding that thing, little girl?’ It’s fun—I enjoy the contrast
of sounding like a Doberman and looking like a Chihuahua, figuratively
speaking, of course,” says Cue.
Cue’s earlier work is a bit dark and heartbroken. Her debut
album, 11 Years of Lo-Fi, was independently released in September 2012
and was named
one of the Top 50 STL Albums of 2012 by the Riverfront Times. It maintains
the size of her more current work sonically, but the newer tunes vary more in
their mood. Her sound spans from the older, “sad folk” to the more recent,
sassier “mean girl blues” style that she’s moved toward in songs like “Karma Is A Bitch (And So Am I).”
Cue is working on her second album in 2013, tentatively
titled Mean Girl Blues. In the meantime,
you can catch her around her hometown of Saint Louis, Missouri
frequently—hosting a bi-monthly
open microphone night and playing music solo, with a back-up band (The
Terrible 2s; bass and drums) or with her other band, Drown Fish. If you get
the chance to see her live, you should—she’s best known for her between-song
live banter. You can get a glimpse of the fun on the last track of her debut
album, a live 3-song track. Leicester
Bangs describes the set as “a
taster of Cue in her natural habitat, charming a crowd and singing her songs.”
RIYL
Ani DiFranco,
Cat Power, Anais Mitchell, Neko Case, Liz Phair, Aimee Mann
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