Suzzy Roche and Lucy Wainwright Roche – I Can Still Hear You
StorySound Records – 30 October 2020
There have been very few internationally renowned mother-daughter duos, 80s America had country superstars The Judds while, in the UK, folk’s first family saw Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy came together for Gift in 2010 and later again in 2018 with the Gift Band for Anchor. Of equal standing and of a similar dynastic nature, Suzzy Roche and daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche by former husband Loudon Wainwright have previously recorded together on two albums, 2013’s Fairytale and Myth and Mud & Apples from 2016. Their third, largely recorded in their individual New York homes during quarantine after having to cut short the Nashville studio session, draws on several songs written by Roche Sr following the deaths of both oldest sister Maggie and their mother as well as the meltdown on sanity in America following Trump’s election.
With Lucy on lead vocals, it opens with the buoyant strummed and piano coloured waltztime title track, written during lockdown, a song of hope in times of darkness and isolation and of the connections neither distance nor death can break. Written by Suzzy, the musically rumbling but gently floating Ruins, which features The Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, on harmonies, marks a change of tone, a narrative about a little boy who, seeing the senseless everyday destruction around him, questions his parents “why’s a human heart so mean to do the things that we do”.
The first of three covers follows with the airy harmonies of Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains”), Elizabeth Converse’s whimsical and ultimately upbeat musing on loss and loneliness. Warmed by brass, the second, the slow swaying Jane, is a family number, being written by Maggie as a teenager, but never previously recorded, a woman to woman love song about the here and the gone (“If you ask me what I did last year, I call her Jane”), while the third is a splendid reading of Bein’ Green, Joe Raposo’s classic from Sesame Street/The Muppets Show, a temperate, jazz-tinged arrangement that I’m sure Kermit would approve of.
In addition, and again featuring Ray and Saliers on vocals, there’s also a traditional number, the Irish folk tune Factory Girl, a song that, speaking of female empowerment, was a staple of The Roches’ live shows.
Returning to the original material, all bar one are solo Suzzy compositions, I Think I Am A Soul, on which Saliers plays guitar behind Jordan Hamlin’s piano and Scott Mullvahill’s bass, has Lucy singing about ageing, life and, perhaps, the afterlife, although the ghost that people look through might just as easily be a comment on the nature of contemporary society in regard to those they do not see.
One of a brace of songs that tap into a child’s imagination, Swan (Duck) Song connects thematically to Ruins as, visiting the pond, the singer finds, in a Hans Christan Andersen reversal, the swan has turned into a duck, or, basically, shit happens and those who were your friends now turn their backs. But, it comes with a sunnier side as the duck transforms to a hummingbird, in other words, you never know how better things might be around the corner. The second is Little, a nod to Stuart Little, the mouse character from the children’s books, a metronomic drum beat, piano and tinkling dulcimer carrying along another song about surviving adversity where “life ain’t nothing but a tragic surprise”.
There’s one mother-daughter co-write, the gentle scuff and melodic pulse of Get The Better, begun by Lucy 15 years ago and completed by Suzzy during lockdown, a song about mutual healing that draws on broken-winged angel imagery. The last of her mother’s songs, though, is the album highlight, backed by minimal piano, drums, pizzicato strings and a chugging guitar line, Joseph D is, sung in the voice of the woman who’s packed her suitcase, a song of misogyny about “an embittered rump” who still takes his teddy bear to bed, drinks too much, mouths off to shop assistants, abuses his wife (“his human punching bag”) and then begs forgiveness, but, blaming it on his own past, sees himself as the victim and is also consumed by self-loathing. It does, as Suzzy says, offer an explanation, but never an excuse.
Their finest hour yet, it’s a musically gentle listening experience, suffused with both love and sadness and, as the title implies, a reminder that while we may be apart our voices are not silenced.
I Can Still Hear You is out on 30 October 2020
Pre-order US: https://ffm.to/icanstillhearyou
Pre-order UK: http://smarturl.it/ICanStillHearYou
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez