The first we've heard from her since the lauded LP Deserts of Youth in fall of 2016, the new five-song EP of laid-bare folk tracks from Liza Victoria, a/k/a Lisa/Liza, arrived late February. Consisting solely of acoustic guitar and intimate vocals, these compositions return the delicate, ethereal structures of L/L's work to date, balancing the clarification of her naturally evolving songwriting with a growing ability to weave measured imperfections and jazz-like playfulness into her songs.
Lisa/Liza songs typically operate a little like Terrence Malick films, with scenes shot at the peripheries of their emotional edge rather than confronted head on. Yet opener "Vanity Plate" takes a different route, its first minute of repetitive broken chords delivered in a somewhat extroverted, storyteller's tone before Liza lulls it to a half-time crawl. "Encounters," the album's highlight, is gorgeously captured in its lo-fi demo-style recording, its sweetly sad vocal melody describing "gardens out of reach" and "friends I haven't met.” "Encounters" is essential Lisa/Liza, but the song is good enough to wonder how it would sound transposed into different timbres and production values — like piano or even noisier. "I sat down by the piano tried to write a song for you," she sings over its soft and slowly strummed downer dirge. It could be a doom metal track. It could be an Adele track.
