Today, UK songstress Liz Green releases her anticipated U.S. debut, O, Devotion!, on[PIAS] America. In honor of the album’s release, Liz has made a track from the album,“Displacement Song,” available as a free Mp3. Download the track HERE .
For the 29-year-old Liz Green, O. Devotion! is a labor of love, crafted with time and care over the last four years. First rising to prominence in 2007 after winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition, Liz started turning heads with her first single “Bad Medicine” back in 2008. In the four years since the single’s release, Liz retreated into the studio with Liam Watson (White Stripes, everyone else). Recording with Liam, Liz found the pieces that were needed to fill out her sound, incorporating new and unique arrangements. “I thought, ‘screw it, I’m gonna get me that brass band I always wanted,’” Liz says, looking back on her decision to enlist Watson and saxophonist Gus Fairbairn to help create the woozy, brassy arrangements that appear on the album.
The end results are pretty impressive. Over the album’s 41 minutes, O. Devotion! vacillates between Weimar cabaret, Bugsy Malone dancehall hops, and a version of down-and-out folk that would make Johnny Cash smile. The album includes a single inspired by Holocaust chronicler Primo Levi and sung from the part of a self-reliant refugee (“Displacement Song”), a tale of an inveterate funeral-goer a la “Harold and Maude” (“Luis”), and an astonishingly visceral album highlight titled “Gallows,” which explores the inevitability of a bad end. It’s a multifaceted record that explores the high and lows of love, loss, and all the bad things in between.
