The Lied To’s - The Worst Kind of New (2022)

The Lied To’s are New England couple Doug Kwarter and Susan Levine, who take their name from a line in The Everly’s When Will I Be Loved. While their previous release, The Lesser Of Two Evils, chronicled their respective divorces, their third album, The Worst Kind of New, came about during a time when both lost parents, prompting a more introspective approach. While addressing loss and grief, it touches on the lies that you tell yourself and the desire for love and self-acceptance.

Kwarter takes over for his spirited, scampering upbeat It’s Not Who You Love that again concerns the present rather than what might or might not happen and, continuing the thematic through-line, that “It’s not who you love, it’s who loves you”, the track providing the album title as he sings “You think you’ve come a long way, you’re feeling okay/Got all these plans of what you’re gonna do/Well baby that’s the worst kind of new”. The baton’s passed back to Levine for her second ballad, Winter of the Winter, a song touching on loss and grief (“all the people who still need healing/All those gone and all those grieving”) and the need to find purpose and comfort (“We all need love/And someone to listen/And if there’s someone looking down/Seeing how we’re living/Tell me are we forgiven”).

Adopting a simple strummed cowboy country style, Kwarter wrote Long Lonesome Road after his father’s passing, reflecting on how hard it is to move on and how the hurt doesn’t diminish with time (“It’s been one year now, and I’m not learning how/To do anything, to ease the pain/Can I wait this out or am I headed down /That long lonesome road again?”), whether that “last goodbye” be from death or the end of a relationship (“It’s not the first time you’ve walked out my door/And when tomorrow finds me with your love long behind me/I’ll keep on carrying that torch”).

Levine picks up the thread (“A cup don’t know it’s empty til there’s nothing to fill …The clock stopped ticking a few weeks back/And the toaster stopped working/Now my heart’s broken too”) but spins it from a different musical yarn with the laid back jug-band blues groove of Missing You. Kwarter also goes old school for the brushed drums, baritone ukulele and synthesised brass swing of Brokedown Jamboree with its straight-ahead – if a little off the wall (“City girl in cowboy boots, a hundred pounds swimmin’ in your birthday suit/You’re a little strung out but you look so cute to me”) love song lyrics.

The fingerpicked acoustic Time returns Levine to the theme of a failed relationship on which, with a lyric in classic ironic country style a la George Jones, she pointedly contradicts the notion that memory of the heartache fades with time (“Are there pictures in your mind/A little something left behind/Cuz there’s nothing left in mine”) as she specifically sings “So I don’t remember what you said to me/When you slipped that ring onto my hand/Or how the room looked like a tapestry”.

Kwarter lifts the musical mood again with Two Days, which also explores the possibility of romance bust-up, but with the narrator unsure which way it’s going to go (“I know you’re coming home to tell me you’ll stay or go”). While in the following strummed ballad, Other Side of Gone, Levine is essentially sketching the same situation from the other partner’s perspective, wondering if she should leave or not after trying to keep the flame alight (“I’ve been running backward/Trying to change the shape of time/Looking so hard for what once was /Scattered pieces of lost love”) as she achingly reflects “Half the road stretches behind me now/And it blinds me to what’s ahead/Half the miles are showing on me/Half a dream left in my head”, ending with the deeply sad “Maybe home is just believing/That there’s somewhere that I belong”.

There are two covers, placed back to back; the first, an acoustic fingerpicked take on Blaze Foley’s magnificent Clay Pigeons with Kwarter leading and Levine harmonising. Levine takes over for a hummed, clopping percussion and jaunty strum reading of Tom Waits’ The Long Way Home.

On the final studio track, It’s Only Love, Kwarter opens, accompanied by lone, finger-picked guitar to evoke an Appalachian front porch spiritual feel in the Carter Family tradition. A twang and steady drumbeat soon arrive as the song builds to a soaring chorus that encapsulates the album’s bittersweet but life-affirming message that “It’s only love/a song rings down from above/and then it fades into the dust/and drifts away/it’s only love” and the memories that keep it alive.

In digging into the emotions that bedrock the experiences captured in the songs, the worst kind of new is the best kind of hurt.

As a bonus, there are two live tracks and, while the second, Levine’s Wishing, sounds like it was recorded on a cheap phone from the back of the room, the first, opening with harmonica, is much better sound quality as Kwarter sings lead on the Wishing from the previous album.