Grey DeLisle - Borrowed (2022) Hi-Res

Country-folk singer-songwriter and renowned voice actor Grey DeLisle came to the fore almost 20 years ago. Initially with her self-released THE SMALL TIME and HOMEWRECKER albums, before being snapped up by Sugar Hill and making an international breakthrough with the acclaimed THE GRACEFUL GHOST (2004) and IRON FLOWERS (2005). She then took time away from music to raise her three children, but continued with her cartoon voiceover work, which includes the Flintstones, Scooby-Doo and many others. BORROWED marks her long-anticipated return to music, with a set of unexpected and improbable covers, on which her adventurous and impressive arrangements shine. In the past she has turned songs by the likes of Queen and the Beach Boys inside out, to render them almost unrecognisable from the originals. Though it is her role as an unflinching singer-songwriter, baring her soul, that remains at the core of Grey’s creativity, she uses that music background as a springboard for this diverse collection of songs borrowed from Pink Floyd, T-Rex, Julie Miller, Lone Justice, Hoagy Carmichael and even a James Bond theme. And she reminds us through her blending of musical cultures that wherever it comes from, a song is still a song. No matter how many times it’s been interpreted, it always offers a template for expression, and a skilled interpreter can always bring something new to even the most ancient of melodies.

A truly remarkable offering that delivers luscious acoustic string arrangements to stripped-back Appalachian soundscapes, this is an album flush with across-the-board appeal and the easy embrace that only the most memorable music can offer. What pushes BORROWED beyond being just another great record is the well-constructed vignettes and sound sculptures rooted in moments of tepid banality elevated into visceral, at times therapeutic, experiences. Just about anywhere you drop in will take your breath away. Production is by Marvin Etzioni, founder member of Lone Justice, who produced and played on her previous albums. Grey is a skilled autoharp player, which she uses effectively on the opening Another Brick In The Wall. At once brave and solitary, gentle and bracing, provocative and spiritually resonant, when she lets loose as the song builds with the Tammy Rogers played and arranged strings and horns by David Ralicke swelling behind her, the emotion is undeniable.

Her version of the Hoagy Carmichael classic Georgia On My Mind is transcendent. Again, her autoharp sets the tone, before Tammy Rogers’ lush strings creep in, followed by Mickey Raphael’s haunting harmonica. Grey has a pure quality to her voice. You can hear her love for folk as well as classical music in the song, and the result is a truly unique interpretation of a song that has been the soundtrack to so many lives. With a comforting, fiddle-led melody and an earnest, faith-filled message, You Are The Light straddles that line between thoughtful trepidation and wild fearlessness as she teeters along gracefully with her golden toned voice and Marvin Etzioni’s gentle mandolin picking. She turns the old gospel number Calvary into a sultry, decadent night club tune. Her gritty passion would pair just as well with a whiskey shot after a PBR and a loud Beale St. bar as it would a packed old country church in the backwoods of the Deep South.

Borrowed And Blue, a song co-written by Grey and Etzioni, was previously included on her HOMEWRECKER album. This new version has a sparse country arrangement featuring Greg Leisz’s velvety pedal steel and her ex-husband Murry Hammond’s guitar, that lends itself to letting her vocal shine, and there is a lonesomeness to the song about the classic case of an illicit affair with a married man. The album closes with the bonus track Willie We Have Missed You, which was previously included in the all-star tribute album BEAUTIFUL DREAMER: The Songs of Stephen Foster. Stripped naked to autoharp, light percussion, swirling pedal steel and acoustic guitar meandering, Grey’s singing style is unique, a genuinely old-time inspired voicing delivered with sensitive aplomb, creating moments of direct melancholy, uplifting beauty and muted sound that pushes the mind to the extreme.