DESCRIPTION:
Indie rock veteran Sue Garner was born and raised in Cave Spring, GA, later attending art school in Atlanta before settling in New York and joining the city's nascent No Wave scene via her band Vietnam. Stints in cult favorites including the Last Round Up, the Shams and Fish & Roses (the latter including husband Rick Brown) followed before Garner joined the underground supergroup Run On in 1992; upon dissolving the project, she made her solo debut in 1998 with To Run More Smoothly. Still appeared two years later.

Shadyside was recorded and mixed by J.D. Foster (Dwight Yoakam, Richard Buckner) and Sue Garner in Brooklyn, except for some of "Beach" and "Old Women," recorded by Jim O'Rourke in Chicago. The album features four poems by Fay Hart set to music by Garner, four songs written entirely by Garner, a cover of Michael Hurley's "Paint a Design," and songwriting collaborations between Garner and Jonathan Thomas, her husband Rick Brown, and former Shams bandmate Amanda Uprichard. Garner's warm, intimate, homespun, and sultry voice enables her to preserve the emotional core of her songs even when they seem like melodic fragments glued together by artsy instrumentation and digital effects.