Liz Lawrence – ‘Vespers’ album review: a breathtaking elegy to the beauty of grief
“What is grief if not love persevering?” Of all the places, the 2021 Marvel sitcom WandaVision is not the place you’d expect to find the world’s most profound quotes about death. But Liz Lawrence knows the feeling all too well.
The Skinny: There’s no easier way to put it than to say that the singer-songwriter’s fifth album was borne out of the most heartbreaking circumstances. Lawrence’s sister, Jessie, died suddenly, aged just 35, in the summer of 2024, and thus set in motion a journey of grappling with not just her own personal pain, but what this meant for the rest of the course of her life.
The fact that, over time, Lawrence has been able to transform that deep well of grief into something as pure and true as the album Vespers is testament to a genuinely transformative and powerful artist who should have the world at her feet by the sheer mastery of this record. I urge you to listen, then listen again: make sure you’ve taken in every single word that she sings.
In this sense, the lyricism is most obviously the greatest asset to an album of this kind. With societal attitudes towards grief having often conditioned the masses into not knowing what to say, the ability to beautifully express every ounce of the feelings this brings not once, but 13 times over on each of the tracks, is frankly nothing short of mind-blowing.
There are countless rich examples to choose from, but often the biggest gems are not those loaded with patent emotion. ‘A Good One’ reflects, “People talk about her/ They say it can’t be true/ Well, you better believe it/ It’ll hit you like a tonne of bricks,” while ‘Heaven Didn’t Need Another Angel’ is refreshingly plain about the injustice and lack in comfort of it all, as Lawrence laments, “I don’t want you as a collar dove/ Smiling on us kindly from above”.
With this in mind, and with all due respect to the musician’s sonic technicalities, Vespers is an album that you are listening to purely for the poetry. That’s not a criticism, to be clear – there’s a mesmeric quality to be found in the sheer intensity with which she communicates her words, and it’s something that the listener would be all the poorer for turning their attention away from.
Of course, the very nature of grief, unfortunately, means that it’s perhaps the most universal thing that could ever exist. By the same token, the conditions of it make it that it’s hidden away, highly private, and intensely scrutinised. For that, the release of the song ‘Thank God For You’ is the final realisation of hope and contentment after the storm of sadness that has passed.
Lawrence exhibits the true prime of her dominion on Vespers. She doesn’t need to be loud or overbearing about it, just simple and true to herself: this is her specific story of grief, but in doing so, she has made something entirely singular and relatable to every human being on Earth. There is no greater legacy to a lost loved one than that.
Standout Track: ‘Thank God For You’
The Verdict: Nothing will ever be able to quell the pain for Lawrence of the loss of her sister, but packaging even the messiest moments and thoughts of this grief into an album in the form of Vespers takes an amount of grit and tenacity from an artist that many would never be able to muster. For that alone, the singer deserves every ounce of acclaim that is going for her, but more than that, the album is a reckoning to something so much greater.
Release Date: June 5th, 2026 | Producer: Liz Lawrence | Label: Chrysalis Records
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