Elizabeth Still: Going for Home

2022 felt like Haress’ year. On the back of their second album Ghosts, (which featured at number three in our Top 50 Albums), various windows opened, including an extensive tour with fellow Wrong Speed Records label mates, Enablers. A tour that felt like one of those rare moments in live music thanks to the ramifications of Brexit.

It was one of the many highlights for the Bishop’s Castle-based four-piece over the past year, also playing alongside post-rock legends, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, as well as a forthcoming a run of dates with Steve Von Till in support of his high-watermark LP, 2020’s No Wilderness Deep Enough.

Preceding the tour with Von Till comes the small matter of Haress mastermind Elizabeth Still’s debut LP, Going for Home. Still’s guitar playing, silky and effortless, underpinning the Haress experience – her style of dancing up and down the fretboard creating the kind of woodsy sound portals that lead to new possibilities. And on Going for Home that continues, as Still orchestrates a homespun warmth where locality features heavily throughout.

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Those familiar with Ben Chasney’s 2021 Drag City release, The Intimate Landscape, and more recently with Infinite River’s Prequel will instantly find sanctuary in Going for Home. Recorded, mixed and mastered by fellow finger-picker Nick Jonah Davis, Still creates an atmosphere tailor-made for open fireplaces and lazy Sunday mornings.

It’s not all uplifting and defiant, though. In all its medieval mystique, on opening track, Yoshi’s Bagel, Still presents one of two moments on Going for Home that emerge like storm clouds from over the green rolling hills. (The other being Sleeping in the Sun, which bubbles with eerie undercurrents despite the sound of a purring cat that acts as the track’s fade out.)

One of the many homely aspects of Going for Home is Still’s incorporation of field recordings. Although subtle, they form the record’s foundation. The rain during the buoyant Rain Dog; what sounds like a windshield wiper during the Sir Richard Bishop-inspired Nought, and the rooster’s crow during the delightful Flip.

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Then there’s the rustic charm of the title track and Ups and Downs. Both vignettes brimming with an outhouse sway, the pair are as good as anything Haress have delivered. Meanwhile, Lullaby reaches same damp terrains the likes of Lankum have recently colonised.

Still doesn’t let up during the album’s later moments, either! On Third Cap Strolling, Still unveils a slightly different picture with a guitar sketch that could accompany a peaceful ramble on a sun-drenched winter’s day. And as the birds’ chirp through the sombre acoustic thrum of the closing Fire Song, it really does feel like we are, indeed, going for home.

While occupying a similar sound world to Haress, it’s the skeletal soundscapes that give Going for Home an elusive, perennial charm. The experimental acoustic world continues to grow, but with her subtle style and range, Still occupies an enclave that separates her songs from the lot, with songs that grow stronger with each listen.

Going for Home is out now via Wrong Speed Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.