Liz Durrett Outside Our Gates by: Julia Gray Wed:19-Nov-08 Label: Warm Electric Year: 2008 WB rating 69 out of 100

Outside Our Gates is the third full-length effort by Liz Durrett, and her first collaboration with producer Eric Bachmann of Crooked Fingers. The Athens, GA artist fleshes out the album with guest appearances from Vic Chesnutt, Brian Causey and Amanda Kapousouz, among others. Wavering between classic American singer-songwriter and early Bright Eyes, the album at times feels disjointed. Yet Durrett’s lyrical instincts are straight on, as she paints intoxicatingly complex imagery articulated fittingly with staid vocals.

From the first notes, Durrett weaves a sad, bewitching tale. ‘Wake to Believe’ shows her at her best, mixing sparse instrumentation with angst drenched vocals. With the opening lines “round, round goes the clock/ my panic sounds like tick tock”, the syncopated drum and guitar fittingly mimic the timepiece, yet blend organically enough into the swell of violins to conjure a heartbeat. Like a siren, Durrett invites you to come inside the gates with lusciously layered vocals – fittingly, on no song more beautifully than ‘The Sea a Dream’.

Some do not fair so well: ‘In The Eaves’ starts slowly, as the organic clips, static, and dissonance feed a relentless tension that builds throughout the song only to be abruptly supplanted by the same sparse instrumentation and hushed vocals as the beginning. The bookend method does a disservice to the song.

Yet even when Durrett missteps, she at least does so with experimental flare. The appropriately named ‘Note for a Girl’ jars the senses with a single sustained tone which overwhelms the vocals and eventually the song. The xylophone in the opening of ‘Always Signs’ smacks more of Tom Waits than the country blues feel Durrett cultivates in the majority of the album. Yet these songs, though ill fitted to the acoustic theme of the record, retain an undeniable lyrical and singular appeal.

Similarly, the variation of songs like ‘Wild As Them’ and ‘All of Them All’ provide a well needed break from Durrett’s sometimes flat sound. Unfortunately ‘Wild As Them’ comes too soon in the album to fully realise its sonic relief. Instead, it is this constant alternation from songs exhibiting clean, crisp harmonies to those of dissonance that leaves one wondering if Durrett has yet to find her true voice as a songwriter.

The tracks ‘We Build Bridges’, ‘Not Running’, and ‘You Live Alone’ jibe more consistently with the style of the album, and here is where Durrett’s vocalisation seems most at home. Her husky whisper softens to earnestness. These songs also best showcase the intricate guitar work of Vic Chesnutt, Durrett’s noted singer-songwriter uncle.  

While Outside Our Gates is patchy and at times beige, there is enough colour in Durrett’s art to offset these notable qualms.