In the months after her sister\u2019s death, singer-songwriter Liz Lawrence couldn\u2019t even listen to music, let alone play it. \u201cI was very much, \u2018That\u2019s in the past and I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to be asked of me now,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI\u00a0didn\u2019t think about my work. I wasn\u2019t interested. I didn\u2019t have any appetite for it.\u201d After slowly gravitating back to\u00a0music via female vocalists such as Lisa O\u2019Neill, Adrianne Lenker and Joanna Newsom, and as the time afforded to grieving was squeezed out\u00a0by a life still ongoing, Lawrence realised she needed songs that allowed her to return to that \u201cspace of contemplation, reflection and sadness\u201d.<\/p>\n
She quickly searched out a Reddit thread of the best grief albums of all time, only to find a lengthy list of very specific rock and metal records chiefly made by men. \u201cI was just looking for open and frank sadness,\u201d she says, as opposed to the anger broiling within the suggested albums. That plain-speaking despair permeates Lawrence\u2019s beautiful fifth album, Vespers, an unvarnished tribute to elder sister Jessie, who died suddenly in 2024 following an accident while on holiday with her partner and two small children in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Eschewing the muscular indie pop of Lawrence\u2019s previous four albums, which had seen her land tour support slots with the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club, the Big Moon and Everything Everything, the self-produced Vespers favours elegiac, stripped-back folk peppered with delicate string arrangements. Written during a three-week burst of creativity six months after Jessie\u2019s accident, heartache lurks round every corner. It\u2019s there on the sparse Exploded Into Flowers, which recalls the uncanny pageantry of a funeral, or via the relatable memories (\u201cMaking you laugh was in my top five feelings\u201d) conjured up on the poignant Sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no intentions for the album at\u00a0all,\u201d Lawrence, 35, says, nursing a half pint of Guinness in a pub in Birmingham, not far from where she lives with her partner and their dog. \u201cIt\u2019s simply wanting there to be a space, or maybe culturally finding a space, for\u00a0the shittier things. The things that\u00a0are not very easy to be capitalist about. Or\u00a0sell a load of merch for.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markThere are hundreds of thousands of words for this, but maybe there are too many<\/p>\n
Lawrence had just played her final festival show of the summer in support of her 2024 album, the BBC 6 Music favourite Peanuts, when she got a call from her father telling her that Jessie was in intensive care. Trains and flights were hurriedly booked as\u00a0Lawrence entered what she now calls \u201cpower-saving mode\u201d in which \u201ceverything else gets put on mute so you can focus on the enormity of moments\u201d. While she had been told about the severity of Jessie\u2019s condition, the truth hadn\u2019t fully permeated the adrenalised exterior. \u201cI was thinking: \u2018Well miracles happen,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201c\u2018And why shouldn\u2019t it be us?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The suddenness of Jessie\u2019s death at just 35 means that Lawrence\u2019s reflex is\u00a0still to text her, as if the ultimate miracle is that the nightmare never happened at all. That strange liminal state is explored on Vespers via Where Did You Go: \u201cI surprise myself \/ How many times I asked that,\u201d Lawrence sings of the title over plucked guitar and a heartbeat-like metronome. \u201cChecking my phone \/ Drawn to the light like a moth \/ But someone tore my wings off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those early hours and days at the hospital still play out with absolute clarity. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been more present in my entire life than sitting in an intensive care cubicle,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t sleep for two days but I don\u2019t remember being tired. There was no room for tiredness.\u201d Normal life continued around her; she\u00a0remembers being in the hospital\u2019s family room sitting near two elderly Irish ladies having a natter. \u201cI heard one of them say to the other: \u2018Oh, did you hear about the woman who came in and she\u2019s hurt her head.\u2019 I thought: \u2018They\u2019re talking about my sister.\u2019 It\u00a0was a really odd out-of-body sense of\u00a0\u2018Oh, this is a story for you, but I\u2019m actually that person who\u2019s living in the thing that we think will never happen to us\u2019. But it happens to someone. It\u2019s\u00a0got to happen to someone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Lawrence also had a strong sense that she needed to document what was happening in those early stages, both for her and her family. She\u2019d keep notes on paper and on her phone of\u00a0\u201cdetails that I found either unbelievably tragic, or very poignant. Things like my sister\u2019s blood type, which I\u2019d never known, as well as certain medication they were giving her. I really felt it was important to document it. Then we got home, started the early grieving and I didn\u2019t\u00a0do anything with it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawrence is keen to make it clear that these notes didn\u2019t represent the early stages of songwriting. Far from it\u00a0\u2013 music at the time seemed firmly in her past. This was an attempt to gain some control of a situation spiralling out of reach. Once the family returned to the UK, the focus was simply on the rudimentary \u201cday-by-day-ness\u201d of it\u00a0all. \u201cI\u2019d been through this intensely profound experience of being with my sister, her dying, and then coming back home and all I could think was: \u2018God, tea is really good.\u2019 It\u2019s so cliche, but it\u2019s absolutely true.\u201d Her sister\u2019s young children also offered a similar shot of comfort. \u201cThey just wanted to have fun,\u201d Lawrence says, her face noticeably relaxing when she talks about them. \u201cThey want to play. They don\u2019t want to sit down and have a deep and meaningful with you. They really don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation mark For me, grief feels like the tide coming in and then going out and then in and then going out<\/p>\n
Lawrence\u2019s priorities have shifted around their needs, too. \u201cBasically, when it comes to my work or music, if\u00a0I\u2019m going to miss Sunday morning swimming it\u2019s going to have to be worth my while,\u201d she smiles. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve changed a lot. It\u2019s the uncanniness of life: It will look very similar, but feel entirely new.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Vespers\u2019 most gut-wrenching songs, Birthday Party, explores the experience of celebrating her niece\u2019s first birthday without her mum. It\u2019s\u00a0one of a handful of life\u2019s landmarks that pepper the record, each one\u2019s joy\u00a0punctured ever so slightly. \u201cMake\u00a0a\u00a0wish \/ That can come true,\u201d Lawrence sings, \u201cNot the one \/ That\u2019s impossible.\u201d Like so much of the album, it feels devastating in its lyrical economy. \u201cI\u2019ve taken a lot of comfort in frankness,\u201d she says. \u201cMe and my girlfriend had a lot of discussions about the \u2018no words\u2019 sentiment, as in \u2018there are no words\u2019 \u2026 But actually there are many words. There are hundreds of thousands of words for this, but maybe there are too many.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is aware that grief is a different beast for everyone, but is pretty certain about one aspect: \u201cThere\u2019s no narrative. We look for it. We go: \u2018OK, we\u2019re recovering, so we\u2019re going to continue to recover,\u2019 but that\u2019s simply not how it works. For me, it feels more like the tide coming in and then going out and then in and then going out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite it being a record of one person\u2019s relationship with death and\u00a0life, at the heart of Vespers is a universality of emotion \u2013 specifically the dead weight of sadness \u2013 that should see it added to Lawrence\u2019s now-favourite Reddit thread of grief albums. \u201cI really like people writing to\u00a0me and saying: \u2018I\u2019ve lost someone and I\u2019m connecting with this,\u2019\u201d she\u00a0says. It\u2019s been a long battle with herself over what happens when something as delicate and personal as\u00a0an album about grief switches from\u00a0creativity to commerce.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially, I was thinking: No Spotify, no digital, just vinyl. You know, only 100 people can ever hear it. But that quality of connection is how I\u2019m going to quantify the perceived success of this,\u201d she says, literal glass now empty but the metaphorical one approaching half full. \u201cThat\u2019s how I\u2019ve\u00a0tried to make peace with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vespers is released on 5 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the months after her sister\u2019s death, singer-songwriter Liz Lawrence couldn\u2019t even listen to music, let alone play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-595838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}