''The Original Leap Year'' is the second album by

Emm Gryner Emm Gryner (born in Sarnia, Ontario) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, recording artist, and author. She has released 20 albums as a solo performer, and has collaborated with artists including David Bowie and Chris Hadfield. Early life Gryn ...

, released on Gryner's independent

Dead Daisy Records Emm Gryner (born in Sarnia, Ontario) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, recording artist, and author. She has released 20 albums as a solo performer, and has collaborated with artists including David Bowie and Chris Hadfield. Early life Gryn ...

. Gryner funded the album with prize money from

Standard Broadcasting Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...

's National Songwriting Competition. The album, which was credited as a thematic song cycle inspired by the

zodiac The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Within this zodiac ...

, attracted significant media attention in Canada, and Gryner was offered a major label deal with

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. Mercury Records released ...

. She rerecorded some of the same songs for her 1998 major label debut ''

Public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

'', although that album also included several newer songs.

Critical reception

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

wrote: "Simple in its approach and running the gamut from raw power to quiet simplicity, ''The Original Leap Year'' proves its beauty without the makeup of a major studio effort."

Track listing

# "Hello Aquarius" # "This Mad" # "The End" # "Your Sort of Human Being" # "Fetching Decay" # "Hook Machine" # "Wisdom Bus" # "89 Days of Alcatraz" # "Headline Girl" # "July" # "Big Day" # "Doomsday"

References

1997 albums Emm Gryner albums {{1990s-pop-album-stub