Lisa/Liza is the recording project of Portland, Maine’s Liza Victoria. Back in 2016, we wrote about her debut album, Deserts of Youth, a collection of home recorded, solo songs that we described as “complex poetry arising from a relatively simple set up, just straining finger-picked guitar and her gently wavering voice.” The acoustic style might suggest simplicity in other hands, though the Lisa/Liza sound was anything but, pushing the limits of what can be achieved and suggested through guitar and vocals. As we described:
Many of the songs possess [a] sort of duality, at times gossamer thin with Victoria’s vocals little more than hushed murmurs, though even in these quiet moments her words hold a kind of understated magnetism, a power which draws in the instrumentation and in turn becomes augmented by it.
Set for release on Orindal Records on the 30th November, new album Momentary Glance is the first Lisa/Liza record of electric guitar recordings, and the album also features Victoria’s live band—Jonathan Downs (guitar, pedal board), Devin Ivy (drums, percussion) and Pete Swegart (pedal steel, ambient noise, pedal board, tape loops)—for the first time.
That Momentary Glance exists at all is a testament to the power of gentle perseverance in the face of impossibly large trials, not least because it was recorded during the coldest, least hospitable months of the year with Efrim Manuel Menuck at hotel2tango. “We were told by friends in Montreal that even with the heat all the way up the wind still got through enough cracks in the walls,” Victoria explains, “that jackets were needed inside their homes. We would walk to the coffee shop with full face gear to keep the wind from freezing our faces. Jonathan wore ski-goggles, and we traded mismatched gloves around.” Armed with warm beverages and scarves to protect her vocals chords, Victoria and co. recorded the album in just 72 hours.
Although, the cold was far from the primary concern at the time. “I was fully grieving while I recorded this album,” Victoria says, speaking of a friend she lost during the Autumn of that year. “My friends and band mates stayed by my side […] they let me wake up at all hours of the night to cry, or to feel despair, and never suggested once that it was too much, always believing that we could create, that I could create, despite my state.”
The context is important not because we wish to suggest some ‘romantic’ mythology behind the record (indeed, the songs were written before the tragedy occurred), or that there is magical healing power in the making/consumption of art. Rather, Momentary Glance is a symbol of the power of community, generosity in the face of grief, and the album’s use of placidity over bombastic melodrama is indicative of such an authentic spirit.
We’re honoured to be able to share a new single from the record, ‘Tea Kettle’. The majority of the songs on the record clock in at over seven minutes, and ‘Tea Kettle’ is a no exception. However, where long tracks are often a lesson in maximalist indulgence, those of Lisa/Liza are born of patience and natural rhythms, where space and silence are as important as the music itself. It is this that makes the songs of Momentary Glance feel so pertinent to Victoria’s personal trauma despite pre-dating it—an unhurried connection to the textures of existence will always come to represent the sharp vicissitudes of life.
You belong here,
I care,
Tuck your hair behind your ears
Shuffle the cards, things have been hard, But that’s not your fault,
Things have been hard,
But that’s not your card.[…]
Tea kettle on, and the rain asks the question,
Heartbreak can I study you a little longer,
Heartbreak can I study you some more.
Momentary Glance will be released on the 30th November via Orindal Records and you can pre-order it now.
Photo by Alexa Clavette, cover art by Kyle Field, designed by Jessica Jones