Mary Ann Farley - Daddy's Little Girl (1997)

The downtown Manhattan rock scene of the 1990s was inundated with "jangly guitar" acts, many of them painfully generic. But one of the more promising folk-rockers to make her presence felt in New York venues in the '90s is spunky Hoboken, NJ resident Mary Ann Farley, whose debut album Daddy's Little Girl is a departure from the two extremes one expects from '90s folk (angry sociopolitical commentary and waifish introspection). Like most singer/songwriters, however, Farley is an expert storyteller -- and an often clever one at that. Indeed, her cleverness is hard to miss on everything from "She" (a tale of a backstabber who is hardly the sweetheart she pretends to be) to the lusty "My Bare Hands." Sometimes, the vocalist/acoustic guitarist leaves her lyrics open to interpretation -- is "A Better Haircut," for example, really a celebration of shallow, materialistic women? Or is Farley actually making fun of their screwed-up priorities? Farley obviously isn't afraid to keep listeners guessing on a disc that is exciting both musically and lyrically.~Alex Henderson