TEARS AGAIN – JANE BADLER WITH SIR

You couldn’t make Jane Badler up. A Toorak housewife and mother of teenage boys, a Miss America contestant and actor in soaps and cult sci-fi, a torch singer:  her story seems packed with one detail too many, like the fevered imaginings of a drag queen.  But google her, look her up on imdb.com. It’s all true, and what a gift, what an ideal muse she must seem to Jesse Jackson Shepherd, songwriter with Sir, an indie band dealing in psycho-sexual cabaret. It’s a good fit.  A song like I Don’t Trust Women (“I wouldn’t trust a butcher in a fake fur coat, or a sailor tryin’ to sell me a life boat”) means one thing coming from a beardy singer-songwriter, and another thing entirely when it’s delivered by a chanteuse like Badler, wreathed in worldly experience and authentic Hollywood glamour. On the affecting Did I Leave The House Today, she seems vulnerable and hollowed-out, a stricken party-girl on the edge of falling apart. The arrangements are subtle and varied, with horns and strings adding shade and depth.
***1/2