We’ve written several times about Lisa/Liza, the project of Portland, Maine‘s Liza Victoria. She has released three superior albums on Orindal Records, most recently last year’s Shelter of a Song, a record we described as “deliberate [and] unhurried… made in the image of nature’s patient rhythms.” As we continued:
Each track is a refuge of its own, a moment plucked from the present and preserved, available now to step into and explore anew. Victoria’s poetic style has the uncanny ability to sound fundamentally personal yet universal too, as though within the specificities of her own experiences she invokes equivalent or adjacent memories in whomever happens to listen.
Earlier this year Lisa/Liza released Forgotten Sings, a short EP of bygone tracks that had sat previously unreleased, and has now returned with a new single, ‘Rose Pedals,’ as part of Brooklyn label Mexican Summer‘s Looking Glass series. What the label describe as “a portal for creative exploration and community to resonate through all versions of reality,” Looking Glass is a project that fits the Lisa/Liza aesthetic perfectly. Its mission statement is to “focus on the human condition as reflected through chance and destined encounters,” something that lies innate at the heart of everything Victoria has ever made.
“‘Rose Pedals’ is a song about the balance of learning to find calm through very difficult things,” she explains, “while also at the same time becoming aware of my relationship to minimizing my own pain and suffering.” The track charts a path through such challenges, its gentle rhythm somewhere between hesitance and care, while Victoria’s distinctive vocals evoke the intimate vulnerability of the quest. Patience is again a key motif, the song focusing on the imagery of everyday tasks that draw meaning from the act of waiting, from checking the mailbox to brewing a pot of tea.
But, as the above quote suggests, it is also wary of getting lost in these solitary rituals and tries to express the importance of connection with others too. “This practice of reaching out, very central to this moment in time, is also something that we can learn from,” says Victoria, “and something that I am learning, was always needed.”