LIZ Green, the wistful Liverpool singer-songwriter with the jazz-era cabaret sound, is touring with a full band, much to the delight of Please Please You gig promoter Joe Coates.

"Three years since she recorded her debut album,O, Devotion!, at Toe Rag Records; seven years since she won the Emerging Talent Award at Glastonbury Festival; and most crucially, two years since she last came to York to play for us, Liz is back and she's amazing," says Joe, who presents the blues-voiced Green in The Basement bar at City Screen on Sunday night.

"This is her fourth Please Please You visit in total, but her first with a band and with a brilliant new album, Haul Away!, out this week. It has a smoky, jazz club atmosphere with top songs and is sung and played with total command. I can't believe she's now massive."

Haul Away!, Liz's second album of droll and dark songs, saw her return to Toe Rag studios to work with O, Devotion! producer Liam Watson, because she “learnt from the last time round that it's hard to find somewhere to record that I feel at home in".

"The record is like a game of same but different, because I went back to the same studio with the same producer and largely the same band. But I wanted to do that as I felt there was more to be done because Liam's studio is quite magical, and all the music that both he and I like was recorded live," she says.

Looking back to recording O, Devotion!, Liz recalls: "Partly because I was shy and nervous and partly because I wasn't as good at instrumentation as I am now, we didn't explore Liam's studio fully," she says. "But on Haul Away! you can feel that sense of joy of communication between people so it's more free and lively.

"Making the first record was a learning curve and I feel very lucky to have been able to make a second one, when you consider the music-business environment that exists today. I'm really fortunate the label and publishing company I'm with have always been about the longer game."

Liz may have used the same studio for Haul Away! but she used it differently, as far as possible recording everything live with everyone gathered in one room.

"That's how Toe Rag should be used," she says. "I like working with the recording devices that are in there. They're tangible and have presence, everything has a history. It makes the whole thing seem more alive.”

She has sought to be more experimental on the second album.

"People may say, 'Really? It sounds like the first one', but I have tried to be more playful and loose and with a little more range," says Liz. "I was too frightened of everything sounding so different on the first one and so it ended up sounding similar, but this time I wanted to see what could happen."

Now she looks forward to audiences responding to those songs.

"I view my songs as images, which may sound silly, but I see them as separate little islands and the audience's journey as the sea with the songs going on a little odyssey."

Composing on a piano for the first time, Liz wrote "lonely little songs that need some company", hence she surrounds them in bass, saxophone, drums, tuba, trombone, cello and flute “like a life raft or armbands.”

As for the subject matter, she writes about communication; language; home; how to fit in; escape; the sea; elemental forces; travel; mythology; glass-half-full love; love lost; death; the end.

Put it all together and Liz Green stands out from the crowd.

"Listening back to the album, I thought, 'some people are going to really hate this', but I take a perverse joy in that as I do get lumbered with the 'quirky' tag, but is it quirky, really? I don't think so, or if it is, it isn't intentional," she says.

"But it's something I feel female musicians are subjected to. When men are considered to be experimental, interesting, ground-breaking, women are treated differently, and I don't enjoy being put in boxes."

So, instead, let Liz have the last word.

"I feel O, Devotion! was a dry bitter earth of an album and Haul Away! is a breath of the edge of the world," she says. "The Ground vs The Sea, I suppose. There's more life and more going on. Not so much a homage to what I like. Hopefully it sounds a little more like me.”

Please Please You presents Liz Green, supported by Woodpigeon and Alisia Casper, at The Basement, City Screen, York, on Sunday at 8pm; tickets, £7 in advance online at thebasementyork.co.uk or on 0871 902 5726 or £9 on the door. Liz Green's album Haul Away! is out this week on Play It Again Sam.