Sue Foley – The Ice Queen

Immediately after getting back on the Sue Foley bandwagon with Pinky’s Blues in 2023, I picked up “The Ice Queen,” a rather acclaimed release from 2018. I mean, she’s just so good.

It’s an odd, random reconnection with an artist that I was listening to right around our earliest days of parenthood, then lost track of, and now have found again at a time when our kids are grown and gone. How does time pass like this?

Even though these days I’m listening almost exclusively to vinyl, these new Sue Foley records have sent me back to her older CDs as well. Her songs were so fresh and great in the early days of her career, and they’re even better now – her self-assuredness and experience really come through. She calls it the best album of her career, and it certainly sparkles.

Several reviews of this record, and the promo sticker, focus on the guests. I just about never care one way or the other about famous name guests on songs; they’re generally a distraction. I guess I’m old enough and have such an album-centric approach that, to me, a single-song collaboration simply isn’t that interesting. But in this case, anyway, the guests don’t detract.