‘People say there are no words, but there are thousands’: Liz Lawrence on creating a new kind of grief after her sister’s death | Music

MeIn the months after her sister’s death, singer-songwriter Liz Lawrence couldn’t even listen to music, let alone sing. He said: “I used to say, ‘That’s in the past and I don’t know what to do.’ “I wasn’t thinking about my job, I wasn’t interested. After slowly recovering music through female singers such as Lisa O’Neill, Adrianne Lenker and Joanna Newsom, and when the period of sadness was brought down by the still life, Lawrence realized that he needed music that allowed him to return to “a place of reflection, meditation and sadness”.

He did a quick search of the Reddit thread for the best sad albums of all time, to find a long list of authentic rock and metal albums produced by men. He said: “I just wanted to enjoy the real sadness,” he said, as opposed to the anger that was happening in the bombs. The same familiar melancholy permeates Lawrence’s beautiful fifth album, Vespers, a timeless tribute to older sister Jessie, who died suddenly in 2024 after an accident while on holiday with her partner and two young children in Ireland.

Eschewing the melodrama of Lawrence’s previous four albums, which saw her land tours with the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club, Big Moon and Everything, the self-styled Vespers favors elegant, stripped-back styles adorned with lace. Recorded in a three-week blast six months after Jessie’s accident, heartache is everywhere. It’s there on the Exploded into Flowers sub-set, which recalls the magic of funerals, or through other reminiscences (“Making you laugh was in my top five thoughts”) expressed on The Sorrowful Sister.

“I had no plans for this album,” says Lawrence, 35, nursing a pint of Guinness in a bar in Birmingham, near where he lives with his partner and their dog. “I just want there to be a place, or find a place to do bad things in their culture.” Things that are very difficult to have are capitalist.

Lawrence had just played his last gigs of the summer in support of his 2024 album, BBC 6 Music favorite Peanuts, when he got a call from his father saying Jessie was in intensive care. Trains and planes were quickly booked as Lawrence went into what he now calls “energy-saving mode” in which “everything else is put on hold so you can focus on the development of time”. Although he was told about the severity of Jessie’s condition, the truth was never out of the adrenalised. “I was thinking: ‘Miracles do happen,'” he says. “‘And why shouldn’t it be us?’

Jessie’s sudden death at the age of 35 means that Lawrence’s mind is still texting her, as if it’s a miracle the tragedy never happened. This paradoxical state is explored on Vespers through Where Did You Go: “I wonder / How many times I ask,” Lawrence sings of the title over chopped guitar and a heart-pounding metronome. “Seeing my phone / Drawn to the light like a moth / But someone ripped off my wings.”

The first hours and days in the hospital play out vividly. He said: “I don’t think I’ve ever been in an intensive care unit in my life. “I didn’t sleep for two days but I don’t remember being tired. Ordinary life continued to surround him; she remembers being in the family room in the hospital sitting next to two elderly Irish ladies who were sick. “I heard one of them say to the other: ‘Did you hear about the woman who entered and hurt her head. I thought: ‘She is talking about my sister.’ It was really odd that ‘Oh, this is your story, but I’m someone who is living in something that we thought would never happen to us’. But it happens to man. It has to happen to somebody.”

Lawrence also had a strong sense that he had to write down what was going on in those early years, for himself and his family. She keeps notes on paper and on her phone about “a lot of things that I found very sad, or very painful. Things like my sister’s blood, which I didn’t know about, and certain drugs they gave her. I felt it was important to write. Then we got home, I started crying a lot and I didn’t do anything.”

Lawrence is keen to make it clear that these notes do not represent the earliest stages of music. Far – the music at that time seemed to be firmly in the past. This was an attempt to control some of the things that had gone wrong. When the couple returned to the UK, the focus was on focusing on the “day-to-day” aspects of it all. “I had this very painful experience with my sister, dying, and then coming home and I just thought: ‘God, the tea is really good.’ It’s absurd, but it’s true. ” Her sister’s younger children also offered similar comfort. “They just wanted to have fun,” says Lawrence, his face relaxed as he talks about them. They want to play, they don’t want to sit down and love you too much.

Lawrence’s needs have also changed in their needs. “Actually, in terms of my work or music, if I miss swimming on Sunday morning it should be worth it,” he smiles. “I feel like I’ve changed a lot. It’s the stupidity of life: It will look very much the same, but I feel new.”

One of Vespers’ most gut-wrenching songs, Birthday Party, highlights the experience of celebrating a niece’s first birthday without her mother. This is one of the most important things in life that make history, everyone’s happiness is limited. “Make a wish / That it can happen,” Lawrence sings, “Not / That it can’t.” Like most of the album, it feels wasteful in its musical richness. He said: “I found great comfort in speaking out. “My friend and I were talking a lot about the idea of ​​’no words’, like ‘no words’… But actually there are many words.

He knows that grief is a different beast than everyone, but he is very sure about one aspect: “There is no issue. We look at it. We go: ‘Okay, we’re recovering, so we’re going to continue to recover,’ but that’s not how it works. For me, it feels like the waves come and go and go out.

Although it’s the story of one man’s relationship with death and life, at the heart of Vespers is a universal concern — especially the weight of grief — that should see it added to Lawrence’s favorite Reddit thread. He said: “I love people writing to me and saying: ‘I’ve lost someone and I relate to that. It’s been a long battle with him about what happens when something as fragile and personal as a grief album moves from production to marketing.’

“In the beginning, I was thinking: No Spotify, no digital, only vinyl. You know, only 100 people will hear. But the quality of the connection is how I will show myself to be successful,” he says, the real glass now empty but the metaphorical one approaching half full. This is how I have tried to make peace with it.

Vespers is released on 5 June.