While I Sit and Watch This Tree Volume 2 is the latest offering from Scotland-based singer-songwriter and Romanian-born Lizabett Russo. On this follow-up to Volume 1, released in 2020, she delivers a masterclass in innovation; her songs are both personal and passionate, often drawing on threads from the past, including Romanian traditions, as she explores human nature and maps out part of her own journey, that search for home and sense of belonging. That journey is brought into focus on the album’s latest single, Dincolo de nori, in which she sings in her native tongue, reflecting on her journey as an immigrant.
Russo’s soprano is a precious gift, at times holding things down with a traditional tone, while at others, she sounds like a 21st Century Kate Bush, often on the same track. With an opening that could have come from a Tom Waits album, Do you know mixes percussion and pizzicato strings, creating an otherworldly sound where her voice initially holds down a semblance of normality. The journey becomes more otherworldly by the minute, echo gets added, and she ventures into vast recesses beyond the normal.
Gentle piano combines with off-kilter loops to create a sound merging folk and electronica in a mesmerizing way on Woman, have you lost your mind?, a song that seems to establish a sense of unease while still easing its way from beginning to end. On the other hand, What grows inside dark souls feels darkly haunted from the opening notes. She plays classical guitar and charango and is joined by Graeme Stephen on electric guitar, loops and piano, Oene van Geel on viola, percussion and zundert glass, while Udo Demandt plays adufe, udu, along with various percussion; together, they form a collective that is willing to experiment just as much as Russo does.
The traditional Scottish folk song House Carpenter offers a striking contrast towards the album’s end, highlighting the breadth of her musical offering. Even here, the guitar figures are largely jazz-oriented, yet she maintains that traditional feel with her haunting vocals adding that sense of sorrow as the story unfolds.
She closes the album with Hora Uniril, a Romanian poem that the press notes tell us is sung and danced especially on January 24 (the anniversary of the day in which the Romanian United Principalities were formally united in 1859). Here, it resembles a lullaby sung over what sounds like an old music box. Though short, we again hear Russo singing in her beautiful native tongue. Yet, in those few seconds, one begins to realize the journey we have been taken on was carefully crafted to take us outside our comfort zone and into a world that is not exactly what we expected. Lizabett Russo leads us on a path we never realized we were taking, one where everything we thought we knew has been stood on its ear, ultimately leaving us ready to take it all over again. A Stunning and passionate album.
Order While I Sit and Watch This Tree Volume 2 (CD/Vinyl) via https://lizabettrusso.bigcartel.com/