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Lizzy Mercier Descloux

One For The Soul

Light In The Attic

LITA139LP

CD $10
LP Black $20
LP Color $22
  • Remastered from the original tapes
  • Essay by “Punk Professor” Vivien Goldman, interviewing key players
  • LP Includes download card for full album + 2 bonus tracks
  • CD includes full album plus 6 bonus tracks

Description

teBy the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded 1984’s Zulu Rock, she’d marked herself out as both a globe trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and Soweto jive.

By the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded 1984’s Zulu Rock, she’d marked herself out as both a globe trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and Soweto jive. She’d also established a tight-knit threesome with muse/former lover Michel Esteban and producer/on-off lover Adam Kidron, who all reunited to follow Zulu Rock – a surprise hit in her native France – with something that, once again, represented a complete about-turn.

The location, this time, was Rio De Janeiro, a suitably exotic location to follow their sojourn in Soweto given that Brazil had recently emerged from twenty years of dictatorship. But unlike Zulu Rock‘s broad appropriation of the local sound, One For The Soul borrows very liberally from Brazilian culture. The aim, says Kidron, was to “reimagine the blues”, but Lizzy’s musical essence was in flux. “A Word Is A Wah" meshes reggae with her beloved accordion, “Women Don’t Like Me” is wild, new wave pop, and she even wanders into soul territory, with whispery lounge versions of Al Green’s “Simply Beautiful”. Most notable is the album’s foray into jazz, and the fact that Chet Baker, the master jazz trumpeter, blew his last on “Fog Horn Blues” and the sensuous “Off Off Pleasure”.

Rio was to be the last great hurrah of Lizzy and Michel’s global recording adventures, and although work proceeded apace, the experience was often quite tense. "The sessions were tough work,” says Kidron, in the new liner notes by Vivien Goldman accompanying this deluxe reissue. “Lizzy never quite got singing, no matter how much she drank, and no matter how hard she tried. Chet was very much at the drug-ravaged end of his life and had very little stamina or dexterity left… but there is a deep, sad, lyrical tone to his performances on the album.”

So fraught were the sessions, it’s a miracle that such a cohesive, sparky record emerged. The record-buying public did not agree, and as the album crashed and burned, so did the relationship between its three heroes. Lizzy was, for the first time, about to take on the world alone – and there was but one album left in her.

Artist Bio

Mercier Descloux, with partner Michel Esteban, established the magazine Rock News and ran in the same circles as Patti Smith and Richard Hell. She became a genre defying artist and pioneer of worldbeat and avant garde rock, and supreme minimalist of the no wave genre in her own right.

In 1978, legendary label ZE Records released a mini-album by Mercier Descloux’s performance art duo, Rosa Yemen, and went on to release several of Lizzy’s solo albums. Her debut solo album, Press Color, consists of eight songs owing more to disco, funk, and film scores than punk rock, all recorded within a two week span. Lizzy’s second solo release, Mambo Nassau, evokes Talking Heads’ “I Zimbra” and “Born Under Punches,” riddled with off-kilter-time-keeping, flailing guitars, and lush basslines. Heavily influenced by African music, art rock, funk, and soul, Mercier Descloux’s music gained extreme popularity in her native France, the height of which came with her 1984 album, Zulu Rock. The album seems a more vivacious and enthralling harbinger for Paul Simon’s Graceland. ZE Records’ Michel Esteban recalls, “This South African music reminded us, as incredible as it may sound, of The Velvet Underground.”

Lizzy spent the next two decades living somewhat nomadically in Africa, France, New York, South America, and the West Indies, never ceasing her pursuit of the arts as she transitioned from music to painting and writing. Mercier Descloux was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and passed away the following year.

Preview Tracklist

  • 1 One For The Soul
  • 2 Simply Beautiful
  • 3 Fog Horn Blues
  • 4 Women Don't Like Me
  • 5 My Funny Valentine
  • 6 Sound Of Leblon Beach_Garden Of Alas
  • 7 God Spell Me Wrong
  • 8 Off Off Pleasure
  • 9 Long Voodoo Ago
  • 10 Queen Of Overdub Kisses
  • 11 A Word Is A Whah
  • 12 Scala Saga Samba
  • 13 Love Streams
  • 14 Let's Get It On
  • 15 Bravado