The musical act known as Lizzy Williams is based largely on the creativity of vocalist Liz Chaffe and her main collaborator, guitarist and sound engineer David Williams.
Williams no doubt deserves much of the credit for the pristine recording quality of the eight songs on this independently-released disc. (When playing it on your computer, as I did, the album title comes up as ‘Eight Ball’).
Chaffe does not sound like a trained singer, but obviously that has not stopped many a front woman in pop or rock. Of her four sole-credit song compositions, the best one is perhaps ‘I’ll Be Right Here,’ which also benefits from some orchestration by Mark Indictor.
He also contributes nicely to the track ‘Shine,’ which means that Chaffe and Williams should probably find a way to use Indictor even more.
‘Shine’ is one of the three songs Chaffe and Williams wrote together, and those three tunes are the best of the bunch. They’d do well to concentrate on co-writing 10 or 12 more and recording a full album’s worth, also cutting a couple of their favorite covers along with the originals.
A Stones number such as ‘Beast Of Burden’ would fit perfectly, seeing as there are echoes of that very tune in the Lizzy Williams song ‘Breathe.’ (It would not be a surprise to learn that Williams is a Keith Richards disciple.)
The other LC/DW song here is the reggae-tinged ‘Spice Of Life,’ which is also quite good.
Although there are a number of other guys who contributed to Magic Eight, it is esssentially the work of Chaffe and Williams that is at issue.
In between the musical worlds of John and Exene (at one end of the spectrum) and Sonny & Cher, there are an ocean of possibilities for ‘boy/girl’ (or girl/boy) duos. Chaffe and Williams fall somewhere in the middle of all that.
