It’s Grace, a popular word with album titles these days, surely we all need a whole lot of that rare quality, new from singer Lizz Wright, above, celebrating her Southern United States spiritual heritage and much more confirmed for 15 September. 

A studio album produced by Joe Henry, who has been touring recently in the UK and Ireland with Billy Bragg, last we heard from the acclaimed Georgia-born gospel, soul and jazz singer was in 2015 when she duetted with Gregory Porter on the Larry Klein-produced “love slow jam” ‘Right Where You Are,’ a stand out track on Freedom & Surrender, her first album in five years. The Joe Henry connection is interesting as Lizz on her best album to date 2005’s Dreaming Wide Awake memorably covered Henry song ‘Stop’ and he is certainly a very different, more Americana-rooted, producer to Klein. 

The new album, cover above, was recorded in Los Angeles. Pianist and choir director Kenny Banks Sr, guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch, guitarists Chris Bruce and Marvin Sewell, drummer Jay Bellerose, and keyboardist Patrick Warren join the singer among the personnel. Songs include numbers by Ray Charles (‘What Would I Do’), Allen Toussaint (‘Southern Nights’), Nina Simone, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (‘Singing in My Soul’), k.d. lang, Bob Dylan (‘Every Grain of Sand’), Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish covers opening with ‘Barley,’ by Birds of Chicago, and closing with Lizz Wright’s co-written song ‘All the Way Here’ written with Maia Sharp who she also worked with on Freedom and Surrender.

“In this day it’s nearly a revolutionary act to stand deep in unconditional love, to abide in fearless belonging and to embrace our inescapable tenderness,” Wright says, quoted on a press release issued by her label Concord.
Listening excerpt, link.