The beauty of small things

In a world scarred by ecocide, Lizzie Gaisford’s finely crafted debut solo album calls us to attend to what remains

There’s got to be a word for that specific kind of grief, sings Lizzie Gaisford on the fourth track of her debut solo album Love the Land, which is a poem, almost a requiem, for nature, for ecosystems, and for things lost and things broken. It is also, amidst seemingly casually dropped lines that threaten to break your heart, a celebration of connection, love even, just not of the saccharine, vapid kind.

Although the line about that “specific kind of grief” is contained in a song about a friend returning to visit a hometown, and finding the house still stands but ‘the woods been stripped of all the pipes and windows, the entrance hall is filled with leaves, the swallows nest, the wind blows’, it is not about nostalgia, but about the dissolution of what was once good. There’s the sense the friend wouldn’t mind if the house was maintained and still a home. It’s not the personal loss that is affecting, it is the greater loss of what is no longer available to others or, in the case of the natural world, to frogs and birds and bushbuck.

But Lizzie also rejoices in what remains, such as the “skyline at twilight, the shape of Norfolk pine, and the call to prayer harmonised with the homebound ibis cries”. (Yes, we can appreciate the hadeda). The unintentional beauty of blind industry also has its place, such as “the clanging chains of the cane truck on the dirt road back from the coast delivering a belly-load of sweet burnt depreciating gold”.

And as Lizzie’s violin-backed chords take you through the joys and disappointments of a return to a former hometown, she delivers a last line that aches with the inevitability of loss and change.

Her ability to lay you low at the end is also evident on ‘Hulett Drive,’ which is similar to ‘Kathy’s in Town’ with its notation of time and change. The first track, ‘Everybody Prays’, is equally killer at the end, after you perversely giggle in the middle. Lizzie has a knack for it.

There’s the sense these are intensely personal songs in an almost-too-short album that like a morning coffee cigarette leaves you wanting more, yet there is no trace of sex and love affairs so prevalent in many contemporary songs that deal with the personal. Like the great singer-songwriters at whose table Lizzie can certainly take her place, her affairs of the heart are broader, much broader. They encompass the world yet are rooted in intimate minutiae. The markings on the top and bottom of the album cover are a metaphor of this. They replicate the decorative work found on the verandahs of many Eshowe houses, where some of these songs are set, but here she replicates the ones on the house she grew up in, including the broken bits. Such is her attention to detail.

Also, like the apparent people appearing in the lyrics from the likes of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones – you would love to know who she’s singing about. A name, a face, a relation. At the same time, the imagery wraps around you and envelopes a name, a face, a place in your own life. With the universality of a breeze, of a southeaster, the seven songs on this album reflect part of your own narrative.

Lizzie states it is an album that contains classic folk, prog-rock, country, fusion and choral, and deals with ecology, history and geography. While these themes alone are broad, it is much more than that. There are fears, hopes, memories, relations, all wrapped in songs that are short stories in themselves, accompanied by musical arrangements that appear simple, but are deceptively complex and intensely satisfying.

Her voice is not a divas, her range is limited but the honesty and vulnerability contained within it gives a clarity and affinity that voids any criticism of vocal accomplishment. She also knows just when to drop to within a note of spoken word to deliver lines that crumple emotional barriers, that make you laugh, and make you sob. Sometimes at the same time.

This album, created with surprise funding from SAMRO while taking up a job in Cape Verde (why do we not support musicians to make a living making music?) and released last month, is astounding. It is a rare jewel. It is haunting, it is apt for our present time, and it needs to be heard.

Listen to it on Bandcamp at https://lizziegaisford.bandcamp.com/album/love-the-land And if you agree with us, buy the download, you can choose your price.

All songs written by Lizzie Gaisford
Produced and engineered by Jo Ellis, Blue Room Studio
Recording and editing on Track 4 by Willem Moller, Sharp Street Studio
Violin on Track 4 recorded by Marius Botha, The Headroom Studio

Personnel:
Lizzie Gaisford: vocals and guitar; piano on Track 6
Jo Ellis: bass and drums on Tracks 1, 2, 3, 6; mandolin; percussion
Dave Starke: bass on Track 4; vocals on Track 7
Strato Copteros: drums on Track 4
Nish Pillay: tabla on Track 2
Claudio Andrade: trombone on Track 1
Anton Cawthorn-Blazeby: violin on Track 4
Willem Moller: slide guitar on Track 4
Thuba Mthembu: vocals on Track 7
Anne-Louise Gaisford: vocals on Track 7
Linde Bastiaanssen: vocals on Track 7
Isias Santos: bulldozer on Track 7

Created with the support of the SAMRO Music Creation Support Fund (MCSF)