Grey DeLisle
Iron Flowers
Sugar Hill - 4000
visit Grey's Iron Flower website
also available on Amazon
Coming directly from winning a Grammy for her contribution (her version of “Willie We Have Missed You,” with its sparse and haunting lyrics, raises the intensity of the song and creates an ambiguity about the song’s meaning) to “Beautiful Dreamer, The Songs of Stephen Foster,” she presents us with this beautifully evocative and aptly titled disc.. Starting with the twist in title, “Iron Flowers,” she forges ahead with her Goth like renditions of songs that contain both sides of our beings, the love needed and the strength to keep on with it through the trials. Her cover of The Reverend Charlie Jackson’s, “God’s Got It,” is filled with that duality. When looking at the words they are confirming that God has everything you need, yet the tone of the song as it comes through the speakers is almost a dirge that has a very sharp cutting edge to it. The title song is perhaps the softest sounding song on the disc, and sounds like a sad country love song, yet when the words are examined they are filled with familiar country images of the highway and life sliding by and never lasting.
Marvin Etzioni, who does an amazing job of capturing the sound on the disc and helping with the texture, was the producer for this project. He and Grey use spare accompaniment for her voice, and what the sound they create is most effective for the wants of this multitalented individual. She wrote, or co-wrote, most of the songs on the disc; sings and plays lead electric guitar, autoharp, industrial pedal steel, and vox. For all its haunting qualities it is a beautiful disc that is a slice of Americana music not often heard.