Low Lily - Angels In The Wreckage (2023)

Previously featured on Folk Radio, Low Lily are a string and vocal trio from Vermont comprising husband and wife Liz Simmons and Flynn Cohen and, in a seamless change of membership, new addition Natalie Padilla on fiddle and vocals. Angels in the Wreckage is their second album and continues down the debut’s path of traditional and modern American folk music. It kicks off with a reimagined acoustic cover of Shawn Colvin’s Round of Blues, which, along with a regular rhythm section of producer Dirk Powell on double bass and drummer Stefan Amidon, also features vocals from former member Lissa Schneckenburger who maintains a presence throughout. It’s one of three non-originals, the others being the scampering stomp rhythm Long Distance Love, sung by Cohen and written by their friend Rushad Eggleston as a not-quite-tongue-in-cheek number about the trials of long-distance relationships. With Cohen again taking the lead, the album closer is the final non-original, an acoustic take on Ian Anderson’s post-apocalyptic Wond’ring Again with mellotron by Powell.

Their old-timey inclinations are evidenced by the album’s second track, the fiddle-adorned uptempo shuffling Where We Belong, a lovey-dovey duet between the couple before Padilla makes her songwriting contribution on the fingerpicked Captivate Me, Powell adding banjo, a story about connecting (“Share with me the wisdom/That’s been passed down the line/From generations/Trusted in time”) with her great grandfather, a medicine man from the Philippines.

Cohen steps up to take the lead again on the Appalachian-flavoured Up On A Rock, an unexpectedly jaunty coal miners lament, partly inspired by Ewan MacColl’s Springhill Mine Disaster, detailing a working life of “Dark in the daylight” where “Just one wayward spark” can cause disaster, the song either sung in the voice of an ex-miner whose now “away from the devil’s fate” and looking down on where he once worked, or the ghost of a casualty victim doing the same.

The first of four numbers penned by Schneckenburger, the fiddle lively Aren’t I Good Enough runs through the trauma and questions that can arise in someone who has been adopted, looking for reasons why they were unwanted (“Aren’t I tall enough/Aren’t I strong enough/Aren’t I fast enough/Aren’t I good enough/Why did she give me away?”). She was clearly the trio’s social commentary voice, her second contribution being the brief What’ll You Do, which, sung a cappella, Simmons and Padilla doing the heavy lifting, to just body percussion and essentially a sequel to the similarly styled Hope Lingers On from the debut is a call to action about the disproportionate violence and attacks by police against Black people as they sing “You’ve got the power, release the fury … If you’re the people, you hear the beat/You’ve got the power, take to the streets”. Likewise, Cohen taking the lead, the bluesy gypsy fiddle swing Could We Ever Be Great is a lament for a lost America, “a nation of hate hate hate”, and squandered potential as it declares, “Generations were enslaved/Brilliant leaders locked away/Art and music never heard/We lost beautiful thinkers/Drained away into the clay”. Her fourth, the banjo-flecked Love and Loss, a co-write with Simmons, is a little lighter, a dedication to a close friend, following the loss of her mother and, using the imagery of planting seeds, how we live on through our children (“Like the flowers blooming round my door/Every time my daughter plants a seed/I know my mother is there with me”).

There are two instrumentals, both by Cohen and sporting playful titles; the first, arranged for double bass, fiddle, guitar and Cohen’s mandolin, is the nimbly picked Keep the Pachysandra Flying, named after George Orwell’s social commentary novel, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the other, Bastard Plantagenet Blues, titled after his bloodline and distinct 60s English folk guitar nod to his former teachers, John Renbourn and Davy Graham.

This leaves two tracks, both written by Simmons and on which she sings lead. A co-write with Sarah Yanni featuring banjo and Drake LeBlanc on trumpet, One Wild World balances Schneckenburger’s pessimism with an anthemic song about believing in humankind’s ability to grow from love and to do better for our children (“We’re standing in this precious time/We won’t look away/Struggle and hope make the strongest rope/What we do and what we say/Can grow right here between us”). And, completing the collection in an old American folksong style with Cohen on mandolin and Dirk Powell on piano and Cajun, button accordion is Lonely with its slow-waltzing mournful impending break-up (“Because you love another I’m losing you”).

To echo a line in one of the songs, if old-time Americana is your sort of music, then this fine album flings heaven’s gate wide open.