Liza Anne - Fine But Dying

“I feel like I’m dying, but in a good way,” says a giddy voice at the end of ‘Kid Gloves’. That feeling of being about to meet your maker crops up a lot on Liza Anne’s third album - it is titled ‘Fine But Dying’, after all - but it’s not always tied to such positivity. Like Jamie T’s ‘Panic Prevention’, the Nashville-based songwriter’s new album details the panic disorder she’s lived with for most of her life, but far more intimately and less boisterously. “I think I wanna die, but I guess I know I’m fine / Tell me is it over yet?” she sings resignedly on the brooding, dark indie-folk of ‘Panic Attack’, and its lines like that which are more prevalent here.

On this album, Liza says she’s taking ownership of her “chaos” and the issues her anxiety provokes rather than laying the blame at other people’s door, as she has done in the past. It’s that attitude that brings a stinging honesty to the country lilt of ‘Closest To Me’, in which she sings of hurting people she cares about because of her mental health problems. On ‘Paranoia’, which opens with drums that sound as epic as those on Oasis’ ‘Supersonic’ but turns swiftly into something more creeping and agitated, she seethes: “Let me at it cos I’m tired of it pestering me/I can’t get rid of it because killing it’s like pulling my own teeth.”

On Liza’s first two albums - 2014’s ‘The Colder Months’ and 2015’s ‘Two’ - she laid foundations of minimal folk, building up to something bolder and grander with time. ‘Fine But Dying’ is the logical next step in that journey - one that’s not only brave, but also simultaneously bruising, revivifying, and a comforting weapon against the turbulence of the human mind.