Low Lily – 10,000 Days Like This
Mad River – 27 July 2018
Low Lily are a Vermont-based trio comprising soprano Liz Simmons, her tenor husband Flynn Cohen and alto Lissa Schneckenburger. On the album, there are also contributions from Crooked Still’s Corey DiMario and Greg Liszt on double bass and bluegrass banjo, respectively, Stefan Amidon of the Sweetback Sisters on drums, cellist Duncan Wickel and Dirk Powell on clawhammer banjo. 10,000 Days Like This is their full-length debut, a cocktail of originals, traditional numbers and covers.
It opens with a former Folk Radio UK track of the day, their interpretation of the English trad folk tune Sovay given a bluesy groove arrangement by Simmons who also sings lead. Moving on to another Crooked Still connection with The Grumblinoby One penned by their erstwhile cellist Rushad Eggleston, another traditional flavoured song with Cohen taking lead and his mandolin jockeying with Schneckenburger’s fiddle.
Another cover comes with Schneckenburger stepping up to the microphone for a pizzicato fiddle-driven take on Gillian Welch’s Rock of Ages with some particularly fine bass work from DiMario, while, still steeped in folk hues, a co-write between Aram Sinnreich and Flynn Cohen, Full Grown Love is a breezier, slightly poppier offering.
In contrast, written by Sarah Yanni, Dark Skies Again is a simple American folk-styled ballad on which Simmons sings and shares lead and harmony with Schneckenburger as well as playing piano and guitar, deftly complemented by cello.
The first of the self-penned material is Cohen’s The Good Part, one of two instrumentals, a perky full band arrangement for guitar, bass, mandolin and, particularly, showcasing fiddle and banjo, the other being Schneckenburger ’s solo spotlight fiddle tune lament Single Girl. She also contributes two songs, Flynn on mandolin for the summery jauntiness of Good, Bad, Better and, to my mind the album stand-out, the a capella Hope Lingers On, a spiritual styled number born of today’s global unrest, Simmons singing lead with the other vocalists joined by Amidon on interleaving harmonies and percussionist Charlie Van Kirk providing the handclaps and stomps.
Cohen on lead, the remaining cover is an ambitious and highly effective reading of Dire Straits’ classic Brothers In Arms, the arrangement stripped down and given a stronger sense of the Celtic mist colours that characterised Mark Knopfler’s later, solo work.
It closes with another trio original, Simmons’ title track, a fiddle and banjo-accompanied co-write with Yanni, that she describes as a non-denominational gospel song drawing on the shape note tradition for a contemporary spiritual about being free of suffering. On the downside, it simply fades away where a more definite ending might have worked better, but that’s a minor niggle in what is a debut of which they can feel justifiably proud.
Photo Credit: Sid Ceaser