Liz Stringer

Last year when I was in the USA, a friend introduced me to a well-known Grammy Award-winning record producer and got to discussing Australian acts, as he had worked with some in recent years. I always travel with a load of Aussie releases on my laptop so I burned him a compilation CD of around twenty tracks including one from Liz Stringer’s previous album, the acoustic Tides of Time.

A few days later he emailed me to tell me that the artist who most impressed him was indeed Stringer and that he thought she could be really big in America and that he would like to hear some of her recordings with a band. High praise indeed from someone who knows a thing or two about music. I am absolutely certain that he will be as impressed as I am with Warm In The Darkness.

Stringer’s fourth album is so accomplished that it’s difficult to believe two things; that it needed arts funding to finance it and that she is not already a major act in this country. Kudos to Vitamin Records for recognising a talent that other (possibly larger) labels overseas will surely also do soon.

Good things take time and there are very few genuine examples of overnight success. After three prior albums since 2006 and more than a decade making music, it seems that it is only fair that Warm In The Darkness will be the album to break Stringer big-time, hopefully to an international audience. It is really quite stunning.

Stringer’s voice is the first thing that strikes you. It is rich, warm and emotive and sounds fabulous set against the studio band and Stringer certainly sounds the most assured that I have ever heard her. It is great to hear someone actually singing powerfully rather than affecting that breathy, meek delivery that seems to be so prevalent these days. (You know, the “listen to how sensitive I am” approach.)

That voice also delivers some equally striking and vivid imagery contained within songs that are finely crafted vignettes – both personal and social. These are some of the finest lyrics I have heard from a local artist in recent years. “It’s a Long Way Down” perfectly captures addiction and how it affects a life: “I got a job in the city/making coffee for cops and crims/Hung over, shaking and shitty/ until I got that bottle between my lips.” The ballad ‘Angela’ tells the story of abuse: “Your eyes don’t smile no more/Since he did you wrong.” The album is replete with memorable lines.

‘In Anybody’s Language’, ‘It’s a Long Way Down’, ‘Heavy Change’, ‘Heart’s Been Trembling’ (with a more frenetic vocal) and the title track are all superb uptempo rockers that allow Stringer a chance to stretch out in front of a wonderful studio band that includes a pumping horn section. Elsewhere, there are some gorgeous ballads such as ‘Stay With Me Here’ and gutsier songs like ‘Colourblind’ that steer Stringer into a bluesier mode.

Stringer plays acoustic and electric guitars and mandolin and is joined by some fine accomplices including Adam May on drums, Tim Keegan on bass, Van Walker (a great writer himself) on guitars, John Bedggood and Stephen Teakle playing keyboards and Matt Walker is on Dobro and lap steel. Suzannah Espie provides harmony vocals, while producer Craig Pilkington plays trumpet and Adam Simmons is on sax.
The album was recorded at Pilkington’s Audrey Studios and his production is so good – getting the ideal balance between voice and instruments – that people should be beating down his door to work with him.

- Brian Wise
- Rhythms

Last year when I was in the USA, a friend introduced me to a well-known Grammy Award-winning record producer and got to discussing Australian acts, as he had worked with some in recent years. I always travel with a load of Aussie releases on my laptop so I burned him a compilation CD of around twenty tracks including one from Liz Stringer’s previous album, the acoustic Tides of Time.

A few days later he emailed me to tell me that the artist who most impressed him was indeed Stringer and that he thought she could be really big in America and that he would like to hear some of her recordings with a band. High praise indeed from someone who knows a thing or two about music. I am absolutely certain that he will be as impressed as I am with Warm In The Darkness.

Stringer’s fourth album is so accomplished that it’s difficult to believe two things; that it needed arts funding to finance it and that she is not already a major act in this country. Kudos to Vitamin Records for recognising a talent that other (possibly larger) labels overseas will surely also do soon.

Good things take time and there are very few genuine examples of overnight success. After three prior albums since 2006 and more than a decade making music, it seems that it is only fair that Warm In The Darkness will be the album to break Stringer big-time, hopefully to an international audience. It is really quite stunning.

Stringer’s voice is the first thing that strikes you. It is rich, warm and emotive and sounds fabulous set against the studio band and Stringer certainly sounds the most assured that I have ever heard her. It is great to hear someone actually singing powerfully rather than affecting that breathy, meek delivery that seems to be so prevalent these days. (You know, the “listen to how sensitive I am” approach.)

That voice also delivers some equally striking and vivid imagery contained within songs that are finely crafted vignettes – both personal and social. These are some of the finest lyrics I have heard from a local artist in recent years. “It’s a Long Way Down” perfectly captures addiction and how it affects a life: “I got a job in the city/making coffee for cops and crims/Hung over, shaking and shitty/ until I got that bottle between my lips.” The ballad ‘Angela’ tells the story of abuse: “Your eyes don’t smile no more/Since he did you wrong.” The album is replete with memorable lines.

‘In Anybody’s Language’, ‘It’s a Long Way Down’, ‘Heavy Change’, ‘Heart’s Been Trembling’ (with a more frenetic vocal) and the title track are all superb uptempo rockers that allow Stringer a chance to stretch out in front of a wonderful studio band that includes a pumping horn section. Elsewhere, there are some gorgeous ballads such as ‘Stay With Me Here’ and gutsier songs like ‘Colourblind’ that steer Stringer into a bluesier mode.

Stringer plays acoustic and electric guitars and mandolin and is joined by some fine accomplices including Adam May on drums, Tim Keegan on bass, Van Walker (a great writer himself) on guitars, John Bedggood and Stephen Teakle playing keyboards and Matt Walker is on Dobro and lap steel. Suzannah Espie provides harmony vocals, while producer Craig Pilkington plays trumpet and Adam Simmons is on sax.
The album was recorded at Pilkington’s Audrey Studios and his production is so good – getting the ideal balance between voice and instruments – that people should be beating down his door to work with him.

- Brian Wise
- Rhythms

****
The moment Liz Stringer’s smoky blue voice rides in on the stripped-back chords of opener “Love I Found a Flood”, this album crawls under the covers and makes itself at home. Sparse, harmony-driven and strong on guitar, banjo and mandolin, “Tides of Time” is that indefinable brand of alt-something, presented with Stringer’s own wry, dark-souled storytelling. The only voice here is hers and she plays all 10-plus instruments, which makes this third album a gentler, more intimate work than 2008’s “Pendulum”. Though many of the tales are obviously borrowed, “Tides” has the raw, throaty feel of a confessional and a poetic attachment to place, from the steep hills and fencing wire of “The Road’s Inglorious End” to the hot summer streets of “City Colours”. This one’s a Keeper. Key Track “First Frost”, for its wide open spaces and love lost. - The Sunday Age, 6th June 2010

****
The moment Liz Stringer’s smoky blue voice rides in on the stripped-back chords of opener “Love I Found a Flood”, this album crawls under the covers and makes itself at home. Sparse, harmony-driven and strong on guitar, banjo and mandolin, “Tides of Time” is that indefinable brand of alt-something, presented with Stringer’s own wry, dark-souled storytelling. The only voice here is hers and she plays all 10-plus instruments, which makes this third album a gentler, more intimate work than 2008’s “Pendulum”. Though many of the tales are obviously borrowed, “Tides” has the raw, throaty feel of a confessional and a poetic attachment to place, from the steep hills and fencing wire of “The Road’s Inglorious End” to the hot summer streets of “City Colours”. This one’s a Keeper. Key Track “First Frost”, for its wide open spaces and love lost. - The Sunday Age, 6th June 2010

****
Melbourne’s Liz Stringer has flown under the radar for too long. Hopefully this will change things for this talented singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. Her voice is soulful and fiesty, her novella-like lyrics visceral, yet poetic. A true wordsmith, her rich, shadowy folk-country songs tell stories of the land (First Frost), of relationships, love, drinking and determination (Featherweight, Never Really Hit It Right). Instrumentation is kept to a minimum to allow complete immersion in Stringer’s commanding voice and compelling narratives. - Music Australia Guide

****
Melbourne’s Liz Stringer has flown under the radar for too long. Hopefully this will change things for this talented singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. Her voice is soulful and fiesty, her novella-like lyrics visceral, yet poetic. A true wordsmith, her rich, shadowy folk-country songs tell stories of the land (First Frost), of relationships, love, drinking and determination (Featherweight, Never Really Hit It Right). Instrumentation is kept to a minimum to allow complete immersion in Stringer’s commanding voice and compelling narratives. - Music Australia Guide

BETWEEN songs, Liz Stringer has a knockabout feel, an everyday Australian side to her which is self-deprecating, disarming and not suggestive of particularly deep or dark crevices. You could be forgiven for thinking that here might be a yarn spinner whose poetry, lyrical and emotional, works in the plain speaking and the direct.
But when she sings, Stringer knocks those lazy assumptions into a cocked hat. Her voice, deep, wide and powerful, is like a river after days of flooding rains, lifting and carrying you inexorably. You don’t fight it; you go with it, entranced by its urgency of purpose and conviction.
She sounds lived-through rather than merely lived-in, the difference between being weathered and flattened out and being seasoned and acutely aware. You can hear that in the way she sings of people who are no longer like ‘'a kitten playing with a strip of leather on a sunny morning porch’‘ but now find themselves with ’‘bones growing in my chest’‘.
Some of them are weighed down, some of them looking out at a dustbowl or loneliness as they wait for ‘'the tow of the pulling tides of time’‘. Stringer doesn’t do empty pity and, as seen in a song such as Over the Sea, she doesn’t downplay the complexity of the emotions involved. People get hurt and not everyone escapes, but there are still a few who declare ’‘I’ll drink and dance and f—– 'til I go deaf, dumb, numb and blind’‘.
With her regular two-piece band of drummer Adam May and bassist Tim Keegan alongside her impressive guitar playing, a bit of grunt has been added to the songs from her last album, Tides of Time, which she recorded essentially alone. Some of the subtle country touches have been lost and some of the pop-rock moments more obvious on her earlier albums have been elevated. It’s a fair trade-off.
Anyway, there’s still deep but understated soul in a song such as Stay With Me Here or warmth in the as yet unrecorded Angela.
There isn’t anything ordinary about Stringer. She is, to paraphrase one of her lines, definitely not punching like a featherweight. - Sydney Morning Herald LIVE REVIEW

Album Review - Pendulum
Sydney Morning Herald
October 25, 2008
Bernard Zuel

You won't find this in any recipe book but Liz Stringer has a voice deeply soaked in some oak barrel, stretched out to dry on ancient wooden racks and seasoned with herbs collected by wizened old women in old pinafores. I'm convinced of it, particularly when you match the voice to the face, which is guileless and young enough to suggest the '60s is near enough to ancient history.

This voice is not rough, far from it. No, when I say it is lived in I don't mean it's been abused, but rather it's absorbed a fair number of experiences, both hers and others', and allowed them to settle in, become her. Then in turn that "knowledge" both informs and deepens the quality of the songwriting. Again and again across this album you feel the song and the character in it in a direct visceral way.

Take Drawn To You, which moves with the sad grace of Emmylou Harris on her intense Wrecking Ball album, but without Daniel Lanois's claustrophobic atmosphere. When Stringer sings in the low burning embers of the song, "We both had our scars, now some of them are raw/But I never like perfection, it's such a fucking bore", you hear pain and the defiant last echoes of what used to be hope, resignation and never quite quenched lust.

Or how about Get Myself Together, set in an old folk style and near enough to something which could have tempted Nick Cave. Stringer sets up vast empty spaces around and indeed within the narrator who asks "Do you know how it feels to have your pride ripped from you/Like you are only ever half a man?/Do you know how it feels to have your only son recoil/when you stretch out one trembling hand?"

There's plenty more too. Baby Jane feels 19th-century enough for me to picture the characters of the sadly missed television series Deadwood each time I hear it, Lady Luck is an incongruous but palate cleansing upbeat country tune with more than a modicum of optimism; Having Trouble Sleeping rewrites yearning; and Over The Sea sways and aches equally.

This album, Liz Stringer's second, was released a little while back, but it was too good to be confined to minor placings, hence the wait.

Waiting won't hurt it though because Pendulum, and Stringer, will be around for quite a while.

You'll make sure of that once you hear this. - Sydney Morning Herald

Album Review - Pendulum
Sydney Morning Herald
October 25, 2008
Bernard Zuel

You won't find this in any recipe book but Liz Stringer has a voice deeply soaked in some oak barrel, stretched out to dry on ancient wooden racks and seasoned with herbs collected by wizened old women in old pinafores. I'm convinced of it, particularly when you match the voice to the face, which is guileless and young enough to suggest the '60s is near enough to ancient history.

This voice is not rough, far from it. No, when I say it is lived in I don't mean it's been abused, but rather it's absorbed a fair number of experiences, both hers and others', and allowed them to settle in, become her. Then in turn that "knowledge" both informs and deepens the quality of the songwriting. Again and again across this album you feel the song and the character in it in a direct visceral way.

Take Drawn To You, which moves with the sad grace of Emmylou Harris on her intense Wrecking Ball album, but without Daniel Lanois's claustrophobic atmosphere. When Stringer sings in the low burning embers of the song, "We both had our scars, now some of them are raw/But I never like perfection, it's such a fucking bore", you hear pain and the defiant last echoes of what used to be hope, resignation and never quite quenched lust.

Or how about Get Myself Together, set in an old folk style and near enough to something which could have tempted Nick Cave. Stringer sets up vast empty spaces around and indeed within the narrator who asks "Do you know how it feels to have your pride ripped from you/Like you are only ever half a man?/Do you know how it feels to have your only son recoil/when you stretch out one trembling hand?"

There's plenty more too. Baby Jane feels 19th-century enough for me to picture the characters of the sadly missed television series Deadwood each time I hear it, Lady Luck is an incongruous but palate cleansing upbeat country tune with more than a modicum of optimism; Having Trouble Sleeping rewrites yearning; and Over The Sea sways and aches equally.

This album, Liz Stringer's second, was released a little while back, but it was too good to be confined to minor placings, hence the wait.

Waiting won't hurt it though because Pendulum, and Stringer, will be around for quite a while.

You'll make sure of that once you hear this. - Sydney Morning Herald

Album Review - Pendulum
Sunday Herald-Sun
August 31, 2008
Scott Podmore

LIZ Stringer's music is bewitching. Within a minute, you find yourself spellbound by its sparse, atmospheric charms.

Her yearning vocals offering tenderness yet commanding your attention.

An old-fashioned Springsteen-style storyteller with a soulful, mature voice, Stringer has soldiered on from impressive first album Soon for a neat follow-up.

Pendulum is rich, diverse and sombre. Among the goodies here are the tender balladry of All I Have for You Tonight; the gloom of Baby Jane, its sorrowful tale weaving seamlessly with the ache of pedal steel, strings and banjo; Over the Sea's dramatic acoustic blend, providing the perfect backdrop to vivid imagery ("I dreamt last night of the beautiful birds/taking me high and away from the world"); and the uptempo country groove of You Say So Many Things.

A stripped back, unpolished production lends Pendulum its charm.

It's as if you're there in the room with the singer, under a spell. It's a breath of fresh air. - Melbourne's Herald Sun

Album Review - Pendulum
Sunday Herald-Sun
August 31, 2008
Scott Podmore

LIZ Stringer's music is bewitching. Within a minute, you find yourself spellbound by its sparse, atmospheric charms.

Her yearning vocals offering tenderness yet commanding your attention.

An old-fashioned Springsteen-style storyteller with a soulful, mature voice, Stringer has soldiered on from impressive first album Soon for a neat follow-up.

Pendulum is rich, diverse and sombre. Among the goodies here are the tender balladry of All I Have for You Tonight; the gloom of Baby Jane, its sorrowful tale weaving seamlessly with the ache of pedal steel, strings and banjo; Over the Sea's dramatic acoustic blend, providing the perfect backdrop to vivid imagery ("I dreamt last night of the beautiful birds/taking me high and away from the world"); and the uptempo country groove of You Say So Many Things.

A stripped back, unpolished production lends Pendulum its charm.

It's as if you're there in the room with the singer, under a spell. It's a breath of fresh air. - Melbourne's Herald Sun