I ran out of time and words before I ran out of music to write about this week. So strictly speaking, this isn’t a review — but it’s definitely a recommendation. Check out the press release, watch some videos and hear for yourself.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Bad Vacation is a collection of art rock anthems, new wave jams, power pop earworms set to establish Liza Anne as a breakthrough independent artist and a bold young voice in mental health self-awareness. The album follows her 2018 critically praised album Fine But Dying, which saw Liza open sold out runs with Kacey Musgraves and Ray LaMontagne, make her national television debut on Conan, and win praise from Hayley Williams who asked Liza to join Paramore on their inaugural Art + Friends festival. Bad Vacation is a self-aware account of the emotionally difficult years that followed Fine But Dying’s success. The album reflects on her time on tour and where fresh out of an exhausting relationship, which took a considerable toll on both her physical and mental health, Liza found herself often at her lowest. She learned she was behaving in a way she learned to be destructive. Liza said, “I was a wreck. I left the relationship and was desperate to find emotional safety in someone else. It felt better to have someone outside of me show me love than sit with myself long enough to learn how to show myself love. I was on a bender for emotional safety, not knowing that I could be my own healing space.” She underwent intensive therapy that led to painful reckonings and valuable epiphanies to write her way out of the panic and anxiety, writing odes to autonomy and self-respect and who she wanted to see in the mirror. Liza Anne shared, “I was writing what I needed to hear. I literally wrote a stronger, more empowered version of myself into existence.” Singing to her past selves, Liza also reflected on moments from her childhood in Georgia, which saw her break away from a repressive evangelical religious environment in her teens, “With this record, as a whole, I have felt like I am doing something for my kid-self.”
