Liz Green: New Record, NPR Premiere, Euro Tour

U.K. singer Liz Green comes across as more of a purist purveyor of standards than anything else. Her style sits somewhere in the ‘new world’ category – that which is too clever and too educated to be classified as world, and not hokey enough to be classified as retro. It is much more the latter than many current releases, though her comical storytelling style does leak hints at her youth.

Green’s “Hey Joe” just premiered at NPR Music. Click here to listen to the track. This is a preview of things to come because, after years of waiting, the artist’s debut U.S. release, O, Devotion!, will be released on February 7.

Stirring sounds of mid-century blues and crafty, late-century pop, I must say that I can hear infusions of early-century American jazz influence on British bourgeois, ala Armstrong or Ellington, in Green’s sound. “Hey Joe” shows a close tonal resemblance to “The Displacement Song,” for example, the video for which was released via YouTube late last summer, to pump O, Devotion!’s fall U.K. release.

This record was written over the past four years, after Green won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition and rose in popularity in 2008 with “Bad Medicine,” her first single. Green took to the studio with Liam Watson (White Stripes). And configuring the pristine arrangements that help define O, Devotion!’s sound, Green says, “I thought, “Fuck it. I’m gonna get me that brass band I always wanted.”

The following dates remain on Green’s current European tour:

Jan. 20 – Bad Bonn, Dudingen, Switzerland
Jan. 21 – Parterre, Basel, Switzerland
Jan. 23 – Il Clandestino, Faenza, Italy
Jan. 24- Rocket, Milano, Italy
Jan. 26 – Botanique, Brussels, Belgium
Jan. 27 – Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jan. 28 – Roter Salon, Berlin, Germany
Feb. 07 – Point Ephémère, Paris, France
Feb. 28 – Brotfabrik, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany
Feb. 29 – MUZ, Nurnberg, Germany
Mar. 01 – Kultur-Schranne, Dachau, Germany
Mar. 02 – Posthof, Linz, Austria
Mar. 03 – Royal, Baden, Switzerland
Mar. 04 – Cordes Avides, Geneva, Switzerland
Mar. 05 – La Cappella, Bern, Switzerland
Mar. 06 – Societätstheater, Dresden, Germany
Mar. 07 – Kafic, Leipzig, Germany
Mar. 08 – Feinkostlampe, Hannover, Germany
Mar. 09 – Uebel & Gefaehrlich, Hamburg, Germany
Mar. 10 – Fingerböllet, Copenhagen, Denmark
Mar. 13 – West Germany, Berlin, Germany
Mar. 14 – Manufaktur, Schorndorf, Germany
Mar. 15 – Mowhawk, Mannheim, German

For more info, visit lizgreenmusic.co.uk.

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