SAME producer, same studio, even the same application of an exclamation mark in the album title, but Liz Green’s Haul Away! moves on impressively from 2011’s full-length debut O, Devotion!.
Green was, well, still a little green, even though she had won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition back in 2007. What was fully evolved was her distinctive retro voice, travelling through the ether from Weimar cabaret days or maybe a Jay Gatsby party, as haunting as Banquo’s ghost. The change is in Green’s full grasp of what cricket coaches now call a “skills set”.
Piano has become as important as guitar, and her working practices in Liam Watson’s Toe Rag studios consequently carry more confidence in embellishing a song’s arrangement with saxophone, tuba, trombone, cello and flute applied “like a raft of armbands”, as Green put it perfectly. The mixing was done live to tape, giving a freshness to the recordings normally only found in concerts, and her lonely little songs ring out with common truths about home, escape, the sea, lost love and death.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here