Cheryl Thibideau

It seems as though an estrogen bomb exploded all over Cheryl Thibideau's debut full-length, Paper Fire. First of all, the design is really pink and features a photo shoot of Thibideau in a ball gown at a county fair. (She knows the way into my heart, it seems.) Second, her songs are really cheeky, in a way that would be appropriate blasting from car speakers of an '84 El Camino driven by a Capri 100s chain-smoking great aunt with a toy poodle and fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. One of her tracks is actually named "H-H-Honey." Her lyrics are a flavour of Americana kitsch that's hard not to like, such as "Get outta the kitchen, leave the fish on the line/there's KFC, the kids will get along fine" ("Take My Hand"). Paper Fire also has a fairly large cover-to-original ratio: four out of the ten tracks are not hers. Speaking of, her version of Dave Clark Five's "Because" is especially sweet. She describes her studio in her press release thus: "Nothing is a prop, it is all me. From Barbie to Elvis. I wanted it to be elegant, yet cheeky in design." Sounds about right.