Difficult as parts of the past couple of years have been for Suzie Ungerleider, the Toronto-based singer has zero bad memories when it comes to the recording of her latest album, Namedropper.

“It’s funny—when we made the record it was before, so it was really fun,” the artist known to discerning alt-country fans as Oh Susanna reports, on the line from a Winnipeg tour stop. “It wasn’t chaotic—it was super-smooth and great. Summertime recording is awesome—we were in the heat and having these late-night candlelit dinners. And we were away from our children, so we were pretending that we were rock ’n’ roll stars again, just having a great old time.”

And then things got bad, with Ungerleider being diagnosed with breast cancer, which she has now beaten. Because of her battle, Namedropper has been misperceived by some as an elaborate get-well present for Ungerleider. That’s understandable. After all, the record has Oh Susanna performing new songs from some of Canada’s best-known and most respected writers, including, but hardly limited to, Ron Sexsmith, Jim Bryson, Joel Plaskett, Jim Cuddy, and Amelia Curran.

Ungerleider, who’s been making critically adored gothic folk records since 1997, had originally thought about approaching said artists and asking them to collaborate. Bryson instead told her to ask if they’d write a song each for her, and they happily obliged.

“Some people think this record happened because I had cancer, but it’s actually the reverse,” Ungerleider says. “I asked Jim to produce a record of songs by people that I know, and he said, ‘Well, let’s make them write the songs—let’s put them to work.’ I went, ‘That’s a great idea, but can you ask them? Because I’m too chicken.’ We asked a few people, they said yes, and so I was bolstered in my courage. Then some more people said yes. It was fabulous, and it turned into way more of a creative endeavour than I expected.”

Bryson and Ungerleider received songs and then had the freedom to do whatever they wanted with them, and so the results range from rollicking and retro-rocking (Sexsmith’s “Wait Until the Sun Comes Up”) to hushed and introspective (Old Man Luedecke’s “Provincial Parks”). Beautiful moments abound, the most wonderful being “Cottonseed”, a Keri Latimer ballad marked by incandescent guitar and whisper-quiet brushed drums. Just as memorable is the dust-bowl Americana of “Savings & Loan” by Rueben deGroot, which takes listeners back to a time when women wore gingham, folks sipped lemonade on shaded front porches, and the world was a simpler place.

“It was really fun to be a singer, an interpreter who was able to put on all these different masks and step into other people’s movies,” Ungerleider reveals.

Not only has Oh Susanna done herself proud as the star of those sonic movies, she’s found herself rejuvenated as a songwriter. Asked what gave her the idea of approaching friends for their songs, Ungerleider replies with a laugh, “It was out of sheer laziness.”

Moving forward, though, with a dark time behind her, she suggests that Namedropper has served a higher purpose.

“I had this idea while I was writing other records over the years—it was always in the back of my mind,” Ungerleider says. “I think that’s because I was kind of sick of what I was doing in a way. This seemed like a great opportunity to do music in a different way than I’d done before. I think the whole thing has opened me up to other possibilities. My patterns have been pretty deeply ingrained, but this helped me take a vacation from my own mind.”

Oh Susanna plays St James Hall on Thursday (November 13).