Liz Longley - New Life (2025) Hi-Res

Liz Longley leaves sad songs behind to reflect on the concerns and wonderment of marriage and parenthood. When you think of female singers with the most immaculate voices, and perfect pitch, you would probably come up with the names of, say, Alison Krauss, or Brandi Carlile, or Joni Mitchell. A name that might pass you by is Liz Longley, and Joni Mitchell (her voice and songwriting) was the early influence that drove Longley to become a professional musician.

Longley graduated from the famed Berklee School of Music in Boston (where she was schooled in part by John Mayer and majored in Voice and Songwriting) then spent two years in New York and Boston where she was born and brought up before moving to Nashville. More of her background and early recording history appeared in one of our Feature articles here. The story of her last album “Funeral for My Past” reflects a singer/songwriter determined to have her music heard on her terms– signed to Sugar Hill Records, she fell through the cracks when that label was purchased by Rounder, and when offered the chance to buy back the completed album rights, she raised nearly four times the $45,000 required via a Kickstarter programme that her family, friends and other fans and sponsors responded to with alacrity. This album saw the light of day in 2020 but of course COVID lockdown rules made it difficult to promote via touring. Longley, however, is an active user of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and her music (and indeed her life) can be traced through these outlets. Her life took a turn soon after the album came out, when she married and two years later had a baby daughter. The last few years have been one of creating a family life while being a touring musician, which has driven her creative juices, to write songs that are in effect a dissection of the emotions that have swirled around during those years– and these emotions have been almost diametrically the opposite of what she wrote about in her earlier albums, i.e. the ups and many downs in her love life.

So the challenge of writing happier songs has now borne fruit in the appropriately named “New Life”, where her stunning alto shimmers breathily (almost like a whisper) or soars full-throatedly across eleven new songs that have been beautifully produced by the award-winning multi-instrumentalist Paul Moak; a fine rhythm section is made up of the highly in-demand drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, The Chicks, Wallflowers, Dylan LeBlanc) and ACMA-nominated bass player Tony Lucido, all providing emphathetic backing to Longley’s acoustic guitar and often tender, occasionally gritty voice.

Although most of the songs have their origins in folksy musings on the changes brought about by parenthood (relationships, friendships, depression), the production and instrumentation gives them variety and weight – ‘Start Again‘, a plea not to give up on a changing relationship, has the feel of a French chanson, until Moak delivers a really grungy guitar break in the middle, and it ends with Longley showing the range of her vocals. ‘So Good‘, an entreaty to live in the moment, is a rocker with a strong retro feel. ‘In a Mood’ is a jaunty upbeat song where a hopeful lover is giving hints to an unresponsive partner, with Moak’s banjo underpinning the backing.

The opener ‘More than Ever’ is possibly the bedrock of the album about the wonder and will power that drives motherhood (with the attendant concerns), with Longley emoting breathily and soaring wordlessly across the chorus against swirling keyboards. ‘Mystery’ explores the conundrum of existence, wrapped around the little things in family life – “It’s a mystery to me /That we’re even here at all / Spinning a thousand miles an hour / From above we look so small / Standing in the kitchen / Wondering what’s for dinner / It’s all a grand illusion”

One of the album highlights is the stunning ballad ‘The Last One’, sung low-key for the most part except when she powers through a lovely chorus bemoaning the loss of an old friend “But I’m the last one to know how you’re doing these days / The last one to know that it’s not just a phase / The last one you call when times get tough / And the saddest part is I would’ve been the first to show up”.

‘Different Lover‘ muses about a changing relationship after the birth of a child – “When you become a parent, you have shifted your focus to the little one,” Longley says. “You’re a team, but everything has changed. So hey, how do we make time for us?”. The gorgeous title track contemplates a mother’s fear about bringing new life into an uncertain world, and the closer is a delightful ballad ‘Can’t get enough‘, that builds towards its chorus, as the same mother contemplates the positive experiences that await her daughter.

The album is a triumph, remarkable in its emotional distance from Longley’s previous albums, beautifully made, and sympathetically engineered to support Longley’s wonderful voice. Although she may be happy to deliver for a devoted fanbase, Longley deserves wider recognition.