August 23, 2010

Live Review - "Tides of Time" Album Launch at the Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne, 16th April 2010

“Liz Stringer @ The Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne (16/04/2010)”

By k13ran, Fasterlouder Website, 19th April, 2010

Walking into the Thornbury Theatre on Friday the 16th of April, or any night for that matter, one could be forgiven for thinking they’d stepped into a year 12 formal or a wedding reception. The large space, complete with gilded gold designs on the walls and ceiling was crammed with round tables, most of them full of eager punters eagerly awaiting the musical stylings of Liz Stringer.

Launching her new album (number three in five years – An impressive feat indeed), Tides of Time, Stringer appeared on stage casually and confidently. It was obvious that more than a few people in the audience knew her and that she knew quite a few of them, with shout outs and acknowledgements thrown around the entire night. Accompanied by her band comprised of drummer Adam May and bassist Tim Keegan, Stringer was also joined for several numbers by guitarists/back up vocalists Matt Walker and Jordie Lane. The onstage banter was ripe with humour and self deprecation all night with the musicians clearly enjoying themselves and there for a good time and Stringer’s musings between songs adding much information and humour to the night (topics ranging from her defending of Billy Joel’s music, offering the audience money if they can dance to a sombre tune and many deeper insights to her craft and song writing talents).

And Stringer has talent. From her guitar/banjo skills to her husky/mellow voice which is more than captivating, especially when she lets loose (which when it happened had the audience on the edge of their seats). Her ability to grab the audience’s attention and clutch it until the end of a song is nothing short of incredible. Stringer’s song writing ability is also superb, with her acoustic charged blues/country style songs telling intimate tales of her life and of others she has crossed – Although as Stringer herself pointed out, she has a bit of an obsession with the ocean and water imagery – Not that this is a bad thing!

Although the night was to launch her new CD, the setlist contained many songs from her previous albums with highlights including Featherweight -a melancholy song that had the entire audience in stunned silence at the lyrics, It’s A Long Way Down – a catchy, foot tapping song that displayed Stringer’s fine story telling skills, Get Myself Together – with a sparse low key beginning into a heavy, grungy blues ending, and Children – an extremely sad song containing the saddest lyrics of the night (“I miss you more when you’re here than when you’re away”) and accompanied by album mixer Simon Bailey on an extremely effective tremolo bass.

Other songs included the jangly country pop of You Always Wanted A Little More, First Frost – a song about the hard life farmers have, the captivating Love I Found A Flood with its jarring chorus and The Road’s Inglorious End – a song where the band clearly were enjoying themselves, with lots of smiles and knowing nods going on between the troupe.

All in all, a wonderful night of entertainment with many of the audience entranced by Stringer’s lyrics and voice, her blues/country songs are simply superb and one could say she is one of Australia’s hidden talents.

August 23, 2010

Live Review - The Basement, Sydney, "Tides of Time" Album Launch, June 2010

“Deep, understated soul soars from within”

Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald, June 19, 2010

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.

August 23, 2010

Profile - Rhythms Magazine

By Samuel J. Fell

Rhythms Magazine, May 2010

I’ve been an ardent fan of Melbourne based singer-songwriter, Liz Stringer ever since I met her on the footpath outside the now defunct Spanish Club after she’d played a support slot for Mia Dyson a few years ago. It was raining that night, and was quite chilly, and I remember as I talked to Stringer I rolled a cigarette backwards – perhaps I was so impressed with her set I could no longer function correctly. Either way, ever since that night I’ve watched and listened to her rise within the ranks of Australian musicians to where she is today – at the top of the pile, albeit perhaps a trifle underrated. Still, Liz Stringer is keeping it real. She compromises nothing for her art, and she does it all her own way, another reason why I, and so many others, have such respect for her and what she does.

Today sees her about to release her third record, “Tides of Time”, which follows on from debut, “Soon” (‘06) and second record, “Pendulum” ('08). Both Stringer’s previous records have faired well, amongst both critics and fans, and so it seems with her third effort, something different was in order. And in fact, “Tides of Time” comes almost by accident, although don’t mistake that for meaning it was put together without any thought. “I had all these songs and I was actually going to record them as demos just so I had them down but Simon Bailey, who engineered the record… he helped me develop it into an actual album,” Stringer explains of “Tides of Time”, which for the first time, is all Liz Stringer, from the bare percussion, to the guitar and banjo to vocals.

“So it was going to be a really simple recording but then I had a whole lot of instruments with me and so thought, ‘Well, now that I’m here I may as well do all the stuff that’s in my head,’” she adds. Stringer’s debut record, Soon, was quite sparse, being only herself and percussionist Adam May, but “Pendulum” was more of a band record, featuring Tim Keegan on bass as well. “Tides of Time” is quite a side-step for Stringer, although when you think about it, she plays a lot of solo gigs, so maybe not so much. Regardless, “Tides of Time” has turned into her third record, and a fine effort it is too.

“It was such a different process, but I really enjoyed it,” she muses. “I mean, I love recording with a band because it’s so collaborative, you’re all sharing this little world. But this one was just Simon and me in this converted church… I really enjoyed it, it was fun, and the control freak in me got to finally get its way.” The result is fantastic, and not as sparse as you may think -Stringer is possessed of a solid voice and is a fine instrumentalist and so fills the spaces as they should be. As far as accidents go, this is a good one to be sure.

“Basically I had these songs and I wanted to have good recordings of them all, but also there’s my sound which is beginning to split off into two directions now,” she explains. “The acoustic solo stuff that I do, and also the band which is really starting to find it’s own sound, so I want to, where possible, keep those two sounds separate, you know? Basically so they don’t convolute the other one, don’t water down what the other one is doing. Because all the songs on this album were a little bit too gentle and so needed to be on their own, I didn’t want to put them on a band album. So that was the other reason for it.”

Stringer goes on to tell that there will be another band record in the near future, something I for one am quite looking forward to, particularly after getting into “Pendulum”. “We’ve actually already been playing half of the tracks I’ll put on that album for around six months,” Stringer tells. “And we’ve got a whole lot of songs I need to finish. But at this point, I need to tour on this new record, then get back and start playing with the band again, start getting all the songs right, live, and then recording late winter, maybe spring.”

The evolution of Stringer’s musical career is an ongoing process – always simmering, always producing something, whether it be an intimate solo record or a rollicking band album. Basically, Liz Stringer is doing her own thing, her own way, and that’s why we respect her so much.

August 23, 2010

Album Review - Tides of Time

Louise Radcliffe-Smith

The Sunday Age, 6th June 2010

Four Stars

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.

August 23, 2010

Album Review - Tides of Time

Jo Roberts

Music Australia Guide, May 2010

Four Stars

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.

October 25, 2008

Album Review - Pendulum

Bernard Zuel

Sydney Morning Herald

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.

August 31, 2008

Album Review - Pendulum

Scott Podmore

Sunday Herald-Sun

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.

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