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Liz Simmons Artist:Liz Simmons
Album: Poets
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: https://lizsimmons.net/

Liz Simmons is probably best-known as one third of Vermont based alt-folk group Low Lily. The band has toured worldwide, including a notable performance a couple of years back at Celtic Connections, on my own home territory, Glasgow.

That band has a fiddle-based, bluegrass-ish thread running through its material, but Liz has taken the opportunity on this new solo album (out 1st March) to explore different musical textures, aided by a host of high-class guest players and backing singers (via the magic that is the Internet).

The core band has Liz herself on guitar and piano, pedal steel from Pete Grant (New Riders of the Purple Sage, Grateful Dead et al.), husband & fellow LL member Flynn Cohen on lead acoustic guitar, Corey DiMario (Crooked Still) on double bass, Natalie Haas (Altan, Dirk Powell) on 'cello, and her son, Gabe Bradshaw on drums. Gabe also handled the initial tracking - handy to have your own in-house engineer during a pandemic!

The songs on the new album are a mixture of originals, co-writes, and covers. Of the covers, I must confess a fondness for her take on the old Isley Brothers' hit This Old Heart of Mine - here given a touch of bluegrass. There are also first-class arrangements of Sandy Denny's classic Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Dirk Powell's My Love Lies in the Ground, and Joni Mitchell's Night in the City (which has a marvellous, lilting, jig-time feel about it).

Liz is an excellent songwriter, and a solid contingent of classy, wide-ranging originals, completes the album. When the Waters Rise deals with climate change. The title track, Poets, deals with an author being caught up in her own story. Adventurer is a there-and-back-again story of travel and the experience gained thereby. Sailing in to Shore and Home from the Storm have maritime themes inspired by the time she lived by the sea in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Mixing and mastering were the responsibility of Ben Savage and Nick Cooke respectively. They've done a sterling job producing a recording that has both a mellow, laid-back sound and plenty of "air" - too many folk-style productions these days aspire to rock levels of volume that blur the individual tracking and assault the ears. Given that much of this project depended on the Net, it's a miraculously assembled piece of work.

If this collection were part of an Olympic event, I'd give it a solid "10" for both style and content.

Bob Leslie

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