Orindal

LISA/LIZA- Shelter of a Song ORD-51


Release date: November 20, 2020

And they tell you all your life
‘Search for that infinite sound’
When no one else is around
You hear it too
In the shelter of a song

–Lisa/Liza, “From This Shelter”

Lisa/Liza is the songwriting project of Portland, ME singer and guitarist Liza Victoria. Throughout her new album, Shelter of a Song, Liza affirms the value of music and songwriting in her life, providing her comfort through illness and isolation, and helping her to hold onto cherished memories through the poetry she sings.

Shelter of a Song was recorded in the kitchen of a Central Maine studio apartment with engineering assistance from Peter Herman. All takes were recorded live, capturing the immediacy and quiet power of Liza’s hushed vocals and fingerstyle acoustic guitar. The album’s eight original songs are gentle meditations on joy, pain, human relationships and the natural world that stretch out slowly like long shadows.

Liza explains:

“These songs were written while dealing with chronic illness. When I was actively writing in these last two years, it was often in my strongest moments of healing, which has made this album a different process for me than others before it. The times when I felt well enough to sit with music allowed me a new kind of joy, because of these struggles with health. My vision and hope for this collection of songs is they would allow room for the listener to find their own interpretations, similar to how someone might make a quilt where each piece holds personal connection but in its use it takes on additional shape.”

Liza’s lyrics conjure vivid images of everyday beauty: a dog rolling in the grass on a nice day; walking down a darkened street to meet the sunrise; robins filling up a field. The natural world holds a strong place in these songs, providing much of the album’s optimism as bright and dreamlike descriptions of flora, fauna and celestial bodies are plainsung over muted strums and arpeggiated guitar patterns.

“I had been spending a lot of my down times on hikes and walks,” Liza continues. “Nature became something vital to my heart both in healing and health. I always enjoy writing about what surrounds me as a way to preserve memory or draw out memory from my past. Perhaps in preserving these memories in song, I’m allowed some small agency to let them go, as I know I can come back to them again. Writing these songs helped me to affirm moments of peace and resolution. Writing music is a place of great comfort for me, and it has only become more apparent to me how great a companion it is.”

Praise for Shelter of a Song:

"Shelter of a Song shines with its own dim lit glow and comfort that comes from a place of patience and introspection. Built on an ever growing stretch of atmosphere and spacious delivery, Liza Victoria’s songs look into the depths of mourning and loss, reworking those feelings into a meditative beauty, full of reflection and a mesmerizing folk splendor. It’s heavy in terms of emotional weight, but all around stunning and full of welcome calm." — Post-Trash

"A gorgeous offering of delicate, bare-bones, somber folk music." — Brooklyn Vegan

"Warm and calming and a little haunted." — Stereogum

"Shelter of a Song reaffirms (Liza) Victoria as a truly unique talent, her knack for writing bare-there, weaving folk songs as mesmerizing as ever before... the music here appears weightless and yet it holds great power, like the impress of a dream, like snow falling at night." — GoldFlakePaint (Issue 7)

Lisa/Liza & Orindal Records will donate all revenue from Shelter of a Song's digital pre-order sales to two charity organizations: 50% will support Our Family Farms' Farmworker Housing Fund (a non-profit helping to provide immediate and long-term housing for farmworkers & their families devastated by the recent fires in Southern Oregon) & the other 50% will support Therapy for Black Girls (an online space dedicated to encouraging the mental wellness of Black women and girls).

Tracks

  1. Dark Alleys (4:52)
  2. From This Shelter (5:24)
  3. The Sun, A Wolf (6:27)
  4. Red Leaves (6:27)
  5. Saddle Life (4:45)
  6. I Am Handed Roses (5:39)
  7. The Aquarium (6:56)
  8. Not Ours (5:27)

    9. Pressing Information

    Vinyl pressing:
    500 high quality, 160g vinyl LPs with full color labels packaged in extra heavyweight, full color jackets designed & illustrated by Dan Black at Landland. 8 tracks, 43 minutes.

    300 copies on teal marble vinyl
    200 copies on black vinyl

    CD pressing:
    100 professionally duplicated compact discs in full color digipack lites designed & illustrated by Dan Black at Landland. CD package comes in a resealable plastic sleeve. 8 tracks, 43 minutes.

    Vinyl & CD pre-orders will ship in late October 2020. All vinyl & CD pre-order shipments will include a 4x6 Shelter of a Song postcard.

    Shelter of a Song vinyl is distributed by The Business & Mississippi Records.