Written in the aftermath of her husband’s death and inspired by the phrase “out of chaos stars are born”, as that suggests Love & Other Stories is a debut album about both grief and loss but also of hope. Featuring Marion Fleetwood variously on violin, viola and cello with co-producer Paul Johnson on bass, drums, piano and mandolin, it opens with ‘Army Of Angels’, spurred by a friend’s text saying “there’s an army of angels watching over you” and written as a prayer, it’s about finding peace and quiet amid the noise and trusting in invisible forces that hold us “in a world that wants your soul for keeps” as she whisperingly sings “there’s an army of angels watching over you, a face that you can see when you are still, a boat to bring you home bring you back to shore and an anchor of love if you will”.
Stepping outside of the personal frame, ‘Ballad Of Mary Morgan’ relates to the story of how, in 1805, Mary Morgan, a young servant from Presteigne in Powys, who was convicted and, aged 17, hanged for killing her illegitimate newborn child, the locals so outraged at the sentence they refused to drive her cart to the gallows. Morgan’s song is Mary’s imagined narrative, declaring to the accompaniment of melancholic strings “it was an accident I swear/My babe was crying so loud, I was frightened we’d get found out/I held her so tightly she took the last breath against my chest”. As her desperation builds to pleading “Please God be home/Please God I’m not alone…where do the souls go, nobody loves?/Who’s going to help them find heaven above?”, given her fate it’s hard not to read this as questioning of faith and divine mercy.
With a slow walking percussive cello and drum rhythm and pulsing jazzy textures, ‘Your Smile’ where she sounds like a more subdued Amy Whitehouse, is a song of finding joy and hope (“night might be old but the dawn is anything you want”) when you’re surrounded by confusion (“They selling the sadness, we buy the cures/Pound after pound of medicine, until it blurs… when you’re really looking kindness just a smile away/When you’re really looking to change/When you’re really looking you will always find a key …don’t tie yourself down, there’s a sky to float/Don’t let them tell you otherwise/Your smile sets the world alight”), the line “it’s a new dawn, new day, new thought find another way” nodding to Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’.
The metaphor clear from the title, ‘Love Is An Ocean’ is a slow, piano-based ballad with perhaps hints of Phil Collins that speaks to both the up and down sides (“Love is an ocean without shores/You’ve got to bear it/Tears you apart but you want more”) while, moving on, ‘I Don’t Want To’ is a poppy chug about the empty spaces left behind (“I wish to see your face, at my window/Breath upon the glass and I’d let you in and I’d know you’re real/and you would hold my hand like a storm was raging”), healing (“we would take a moment, to remember/Love can mend where it is broken”) and letting go (“all your words are all around me/And it’s hard to feel the world still turnin’/I just got to love and lose you/ I don’t want to”).
Similar feelings of keeping love close vein the folksy sway of ‘Come On My Love’ (“you were so hard to find/I know you keep changing your mind/If we keep turning back /We won’t find what we set out to find”) and once again of seeing “a pin hole of hope in this old back yard”, the closing line “I can’t get you out of my mind my love” deep with poignancy.
The fingerpicked, cello-washed ‘Plenty’ supports the Natalie Imbruglia comparisons, a song about giving all your heart even when there may be nothing in return (“Happiness is love shared/Loneliness don’t care for you like I do/She don’t want you like I do/She don’t hold on for you when you feel it’s no use …run as fast as you can take as much as you need/For you, I’m never empty”), again resurfacing the image of a smile lighting up a day.
Love of a different persuasion (again with Collins hints) underpins ‘Lay Me Down’, a reworked song from her 20s about being part of the universe (“We’re all tiny dancers on the crests of stars”), the beauty and power of nature (“somewhere in this universe/I can feel the west wind breezin in/Leaving brush strokes in the skies/Mountains wear their hallows all silver/Bless the land bless the sky”) and coming together to protect it (“Lay me down side by side/Hand in hand together/Let’s draw a line in the sand…let’s shake the gold from their hand/Let’s draw in the sand”).
Pizzicato strings sound like signals across the steady walking ‘Lately’ as she sings of love’s loss and disconnection (“Here you come, you walk towards me and you walk straight through/I can’t say when I became, a ghost to you…lately, you don’t make it home… this is the last love song, but you’re already gone”) but also of how hope rises from the ashes and the positivity that “out of chaos stars are born”. In contrast, the quietly strummed ‘Million Miles’ is about the power of love to break through the walls and heal the heart’s scars and wounds (“A heart like yours needs handling with care…now we got that light up ahead let’s keep on holding on/Hold me, hold me and we’ll find a place between the stars and here… I’ll find a way to love again I’ll breathe in winds of change/I’ll drag these bones back into the light and dance them back to life again”).
Resilience and recovery are the keynotes of the swirlingly moody ‘Grace Under Pressure’ (“When they come for us, we’ll be laughing/When they come for us, we’ll be dancing/When they come for us, we won’t be looking back/When they come, we will be ready”) where she suggests a bluesily itchy Kate Bush, observing that there’s “nothing uncool about being kind”.
It ends with the gorgeous, tender piano backed anthemic ‘Open Book’, the most direct song about her loss, a song about the love we have for those no longer with us and of looking to the path ahead and not the one behind (“I am an open book half done, blank pages stretch before me/Now you are gone/The birds wait for me to wake up/So I can hear their song…so I can carry on”), living a life with the heart-swelling refrain “hope in every heart/Hope in every breath/Hoping heaven knows/Hope in every day/Hope in every star/Hoping that you’re close”, closing with the upbeat assertion “You have written me but now I write myself”. She makes for compelling reading.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.linzijanemorgan.com
‘The Ballad Of Mary Morgan’ – official video:
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