The debut album by Liz Tormes - pronounced Tor-Mez - is a cracker.
Although she spent most of her childhood up in Nashville the ten bitter sweet songs of heartbreak and lost love are a long way from air-brushed blandness of that town's country music scene.
She is now based in New York City's East Village and has clearly been more influenced by the urban chic and harder edges of the Big Apple.
Ensuring that these songs saw the light of day turned out to be a fraught process. Tormes naively envisaged she could self produce the album in three days but its birth eventually took 9 months. Its labour pains were complicated by the near fatal illness of guitarist Jason Crigler whose powerful contribution was sadly halted when he suffered a brain hemorrhage in August 2004. (it's good to report also that he is on the road to recovery).
Ironically, Crigler's enforced abscence led directly to one of the album's standout tracks. Teddy Thompson, who Tormes met through Crigler, offered to sing harmony on a new song 'Maybe, You Won't' where the key line "happiness is fleeting" is one which pretty well sums up the philosophy behind the song and the tone of the album as a whole.
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Fine though this track is, it is the slow burn of Black Luck which is the album's centrepiece. Here the shimmering slide guitar creates a wonderful brooding setting for the raw intensity of Tormes' words. The aching lines are perfectly pitched between rage and regret encapsulated in the closing stanza:
"I wouldn't quite call you a thief
And I wouldn't quite call you a saint
There's things that I am and there's things that I ain't
And my heart won't let me forget"
Although the closing pair of tracks - 'Sorry' and 'Fade Away' - don't quite match these high standards, this is still a majestic collection.
Tormes has a quietly insistent vocal style highly reminiscent of Aimee Mann and her words have an genuine honesty and depth.
These are songs of experience which reject the dreams of fairy tale romance but do not abandon the hope that love can shine through to lighten the darkness.
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