Vancouver singer and actress Colleen Rennison began galvanizing audiences upon her film debut in 1994 at the age of seven. Front and center with No Sinner (her surname spelled backwards), Rennison whips up a total sex-rockin’ frenzy with riveting stage presence and sugary vocal tone wrapped in electric wire emotion. She writes, and she’s the real deal. On the radically dissimilar See the Sky About to Rain, she’s cast herself as a country/roots cover-chanteuse, a brilliant move for her solo debut. Canadian slide king and music maven Steve Dawson picked the players and helped with the unusual and superb song selections, and the clever arrangements. Rennison raises the heated pulse of “Fancy,” a funky gem that elicits memories of its author, the great Bobbie Gentry. She covers Robbie Robertson twice, but it’s her opening read of “All La Glory,” rolling on a fluid, jazzy groove, that becomes a staple difficult to remove from the psyche. The sorely overlooked Tom Russell’s best “Blue Wing” gets an elegiac run, while Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote” seems to float in the ether. All of it heralds the arrival of a star.
Black Hen Music
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