Half Size Acoustic Guitar

Liz Green: O, Devotion!

31.12.69

Right from the start, with mournful horns and a chorus of “she’ll clean you out, she’ll clean you out again” of “Hey Joe”, Green stakes her claim to a wobbly vibe that mixes the circus and the funeral in a very Tom Waits way.  It also lays out Green’s basic template: a spry, sometimes jazzy, acoustic guitar mixed with horns that can range from slight drive-by accents (“Luis”) to a song’s driving force (“Displacement Blues”).  It also establishes Green’s ability to evoke the sinister.  In “Midnight Blues”, she progresses from scenes of violence to the tranquil imagery of “I kiss my baby and we put out the lights”, and it’s not clear whether the song’s narrator is finding true refuge or a mere respite before it all begins again.  In “Luis”, lyrics like “Tell me who’s that one at the back / I swear I’ve seen his face before / At my father’s graveside last week / And my mother’s the one before” could point to something perfectly normal, but it could also point to something evil, like maybe a vampire.  Things are more clear in the waltz of “Displacement Blues”, which finds Green singing a dispirited cry to action: “Don’t look to me, you’ve got to carry your own weight / For they’re on, they’re on, they’re on their way ... I don’t mind the fighting / But all we got are the rocks and the sticks and the stones / But they don’t break the bones when they hit”.

Source: PopMatters