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After years of eager anticipation, Liza Kate’s first full-length has finally arrived. Don’t Let the Dogs feels like a collection of contemplative thoughts that allow the songstress to examine herself along with the world that surrounds her. With the use of thought-provoking metaphors, Kate manages to add a level of depth to her ephemeral tales. In one of the many highlights on Don’t Let the Dogs, the song “No Good� shows an absolute strength in discovering one’s vulnerability. In doing so, Kate sheds the skin of tired clichés typically associated with most singer-songwriters. Instead of excessively pointing the blame at others, she exudes a level of maturity by willing to accept her fair share as well.
This is a record that is powerful in its beauty and relishes in its lush production provided by Lance Koehler. The sparse arrangements are delicately accentuated by the accompaniment of several guest players including Josh Small on banjo. The record relies on just voice and guitar for the most part. In those moments, Kate is perhaps at her most personal and emotive.
Don’t Let the Dogs clocks in at just over twenty-two minutes. I always like to attribute Kate’s musical sensibility for shorter songs to be ingrained into what exists of a “punk� spirit. While exchanging the ravaged guitars and furious tempos for something that is quite the opposite, perhaps her songs act as a response to the movement. In how she can create something that evokes such feeling in less than two minutes is a testament to her craft. It’s in the subtle nuances where Kate’s presence on the folk genre can be felt and appreciated by all.
You can fault me all you’d like for saying this, but I haven’t had a record affect me like Don’t Let the Dogs since Homemade Knives’ No One Doubts the Darkness. This is an album that many dream of creating. If it takes another long wait for her to follow-up Don’t Let the Dogs with something just as masterfully crafted, then I’m ready for the wait. - RVA Mag
After years of eager anticipation, Liza Kate’s first full-length has finally arrived. Don’t Let the Dogs feels like a collection of contemplative thoughts that allow the songstress to examine herself along with the world that surrounds her. With the use of thought-provoking metaphors, Kate manages to add a level of depth to her ephemeral tales. In one of the many highlights on Don’t Let the Dogs, the song “No Good” shows an absolute strength in discovering one’s vulnerability. In doing so, Kate sheds the skin of tired clichés typically associated with most singer-songwriters. Instead of excessively pointing the blame at others, she exudes a level of maturity by willing to accept her fair share as well.
This is a record that is powerful in its beauty and relishes in its lush production provided by Lance Koehler. The sparse arrangements are delicately accentuated by the accompaniment of several guest players including Josh Small on banjo. The record relies on just voice and guitar for the most part. In those moments, Kate is perhaps at her most personal and emotive.
Don’t Let the Dogs clocks in at just over twenty-two minutes. I always like to attribute Kate’s musical sensibility for shorter songs to be ingrained into what exists of a “punk” spirit. While exchanging the ravaged guitars and furious tempos for something that is quite the opposite, perhaps her songs act as a response to the movement. In how she can create something that evokes such feeling in less than two minutes is a testament to her craft. It’s in the subtle nuances where Kate’s presence on the folk genre can be felt and appreciated by all.
You can fault me all you’d like for saying this, but I haven’t had a record affect me like Don’t Let the Dogs since Homemade Knives’ No One Doubts the Darkness. This is an album that many dream of creating. If it takes another long wait for her to follow-up Don’t Let the Dogs with something just as masterfully crafted, then I’m ready for the wait.
-Shannon Cleary - RVA Mag
Discography
"A Terrible Beast and a God" on Wayfarers All Compilation (LP, 2004, OWSLA Records), A split 7" with Rachel Jacobs (2005, Exotic Fever Records), "Don't Let The Dogs," Full-Lenth CD (2009, Holidays For Quince Records)
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Bio
Songwriters will maintain that sad songs are the easiest to write. This may be true, but it's not the whole truth. Profoundly sad songs - those that climb up into your chest and make it hard to breathe for loneliness, and make your whole body ache like a fleshy, living and hurting and dying thing - these songs are one in a million. Richmond, Virginia's Liza Kate writes songs like this, but they are unassuming and deceptively brief, existing as a quick-lit candle and then gone, epigrammatic crystals of scene, of situation. Like the best writers of Southern literature, Liza Kate finds power in restraint, saying only what's necessary but meaning more than she says. "I feel like I’m overstaying my welcome all the time," she suggests, before silencing her audience with seemingly effortless music that may be devastating, or beautiful, or both.
Her geographical history reads like a well-worn map: Texas, Florida, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Back to Florida, Richmond. She spent her childhood in constant migration and relocation, following the railroad routes of her father and the iron lines that employed him. Don't Let The Dogs tracks her movements through relationships, state lines, family ties, loneliness; it's an offering of the blues, a humble lesson in honesty and humility. Here, in the stack of snapshots, she is still. And you will believe her.
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