LIZ MARTIN – DANCE A LITTLE, LIVE A LITTLE
When you see the names Dave Symes and Hamish Stuart on an album that is as good as a stamp of approval – “Quality Product Contained Within”. That Symes produced the album, and that Liz Martin already had two highly promising albums to her name heightens the sense of expectation. Live a Little, Dance a Little doesn’t disappoint. Think Rickie Lee-Jones meets Leonard Cohen in Paris. Think jazz meets pop in a smokey 60’s swinging bar. Think good thoughts. Forget those So Frenchy, So Chic compilations, take one listen to the title track here and feel all the liberation of Europe in the 1960’s. Liz Martin is an artist who works into her songs, less personal revelations than lovingly constructed offerings. And in Symes and company she has a band who have found the groove and feel for each carefully composed piece; and her choice of cover – David Bowie’s lesser known Sound and Vision – not only perfectly complements the albums original tunes but adds and external element of surprise and difference (with Mr Percival providing the duet voice). That the album was written in the aftermath of her fathers death and as she recovered from major surgery provides a context for us to understand how a real artist works.
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