by David Wilikofsky
Winter is coming, and if there’s one thing I’m looking forward to right now, it’s snow. There’s always been something magical about watching snow drift down from the sky, warm and safe inside your home. I’m guessing it’s a feeling that Liza Victoria, the mastermind behind musical project Lisa/Liza, knows well. Her sophomore album Shelter of a Song, a collection of eight spare folk songs, feels like an album readymade for this time of year. It’s music to warm you in the cold months ahead.
Recorded live in the kitchen of a studio apartment, intimate would be an understatement when describing this album. You acutely feel each strum of her guitar and each word Victoria sings. Rather than a collection of individual songs, the whole album feels like an extended meditation. Victoria’s guitar parts are largely built on repetition, notes and chords stretching out ad infinitum. Vocals alternately soar above and sink into the instrumentals. Combining the mysticism of Vashti Bunyan with the rhythmic looseness of Karen Dalton, her delivery is at once expressive and unpredictable. At times her singing feels divorced from the guitar lines, words stretching and contracting against the music before finding their way back into alignment.
Lyrics play out like cryptic riddles. That ambiguity is intentional; of her writing, Victoria said “My vision and hope for this collection of songs is they would allow room for the listener to find their own interpretations, similar to how someone might make a quilt where each piece holds personal connection but in its use it takes on additional shape.” There’s a pastoral quality to these songs; descriptions of sunrises, plants, animals and wide expanses pepper the album. Those images mingle with more intimate ones, cowboys “drunk on forgotten love” and hearts that feel like “heavy balloons”. Rather than cohere into a narrative whole, particularly poignant thoughts and phrases leap out at the least expected moments.
I’d compare the album to a snow covered field. Looking out you see an expanse of white, but as you look closer you’ll see small variations: footprints, sticks or grass poking above the snow. Similarly, there is a surface level monotony to the album, but a close listen reveals those variations. A phrase will pierce you through the heart. A particular chord will give you goosebumps. It’s music that revels in subtlety. It won’t demand your attention, but if you choose to give yours it will be rewarded.