Liz Simmons - Poets (2021)

Aself-released and self-produced solo album from the Low Lily singer, with guest musicians that include dobro player Andy Hall from The Infamous Stringdusters, pedal steel legend Pete and cellist Natalie Haas, the album takes its title from the idea that, as she puts it, “Each song tells a story through its lyrics, but also through its musical arc, its history and my connection to it.”

Comprising nine songs that mix originals and covers, it variously touches on themes of love, death, urban live, seafaring and the current social environment, opening with the first of the five self-penned numbers, When The Waters Rise which, featuring filigree fingerpicked guitar and Corey DiMario on double bass, is about holding on troubled times and everything you know is disappearing, a reminder that “home is more than four walls and a door”.

It’s followed by the first cover, Simmons adding her name to the list of those who’ve taken on Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where The Time Goes and not been overwhelmed by the challenge, this a gentle, piano and steel-backed twilight-tinted reading with an acoustic guitar solo from husband and bandmate Flynn Cohen. There are three further covers, the second being a twin fiddle Celtic coloured arrangement of the lament My Love Lies In The Ground, from fiddle and banjo player Dirk Powell, not a name you may recognise but who was a member of Balfa Toujours and has worked with the likes of the Tim O’Brien Band, with whom he recorded the song on their eponymous 2019 release.

The other two sit back to back towards the end of the album, first being a fiddle folksy faithful version of Joni Mitchell’s Night In The City complete with the descending vocal scales, the other a breathlessly sung banjo and mandolin reinvention of the Isleys’ classic This Old Heart Of Mine.

Returning to her own input, the title track, accompanied by co-writer Dunia Best on harmonies, is a light shuffling piano ode to those who write the songs, with the encouragement to “write what you know don’t spin lies”. The longest track at just over five minutes is Adventurer, arranged for piano and cello and another that nods to her roots in Americana and Irish traditional, a song of the irresistible call of the open road but equally the call of home.

A gentle swaying rhythm, Sailing Into Shore, this time with Nicole Zuraitis on piano and harmonies, again treats on leaving and returning, here a young woman awaiting the return of her lover from the sea, hoping he remembers the promise he made. The album ends, then, on a connected and again watery note with Home From The Storm, another piano-based number of melancholic mood, a wife and mother keeping silent watch, waiting in hope but troubled by the possibility of a watery grave.

Soft and soothing, though not without a hint of anxiety, like the wordsmiths of its title, it captures the rhythms, rhymes and cadences of life in its universal being.