Listening to the re-release of 1995's Broken Girl feels a
little like chancing across old school photos: Doiron's songs here
have a bright-eyed naïvete and heart-on-sleeve earnestness which
were erased in the spare and insular albums that followed. In this
reissue, Broken Girl (the first solo album she made after
disbanding Eric's Trip) comes with her early singles, "Dog Love Part
II" and "Nora" (the latter being the name given to the car she
occasionally recorded in); this set list of hard-to-get repackagings
is a clue that most likely this recording is aimed at Doiron
completists. Since I'm a self-confessed back-catalogue nerd myself,
this album works for me in several ways. There's the chance to listen
to Broken Girl itself, which was only available in limited
release when it first came out; there's the two versions of Dance
Music on this (how music geek-appeasing is that?), both very
different from the song released from her later Juno-winning Julie
Doiron and the Wooden Stars; and there's the whole
curiosity-now-sated factor too. Having never heard Broken Girl
until now, I had assumed it was, from the title, a semi-bleak,
end-of-my-tether collection of heartsore bruisings. Not so. This is
probably the most sunny solo record Doiron has ever put out, but it
also squeaks a little with earnestness, youth, and her lack of a
distinguishing sound. Mainly consisting of lo-fi acoustic songs with
lyrics like "We looked neat and we looked cute/ And somehow it was
beautiful" ("Beautiful") and "You cut your hair last year/ I find it
makes you taller" ("Taller Beauty"), Doiron sounds a lot like many
female singer/songwriters with a guitar. It's a strong contrast to
the world-weary and sparse Loneliest in the Morning (which was
the follow-up) and the sparely flourished but compelling, sometimes
self-haunted later albums (Desormais, Heart and Crime).
There are some standout songs, like Laugh With Me and the
double versions of Dance Music, but this is Doiron at her
earliest, not her best. Still, it's something that's worth keeping,
just like the old photos where you and your young classmates are yet
to know what you'll look like when you grow up.
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