Liz Cooper hits the High Dive on the 22nd
By Shelton Hull
Liz Cooper’s show at the High Dive on Tuesday, March 22, marks her first appearance in Gainesville, but it seems quite unlikely to be the last. Her sound, and her aesthetic, are ideally placed in a place like Gainesville, where women have traditionally been a driving force in its music scene. You can be sure that the audience there will comprise a number of current and future stars of the local music scene, some of whom may not even know it yet.
Liz Cooper has been my favorite musician (aside from The Breeders, my favorite band ever, but that’s another story) ever since I first saw her and her band at the Charleston Music Confab, back in 2017. I’ve since seen her play at the Savannah Stopover Festival in 2018, as well as downtown Jacksonville three years ago, which was the last time I saw her. I’ll see her again at Jack Rabbits in Jacksonville on the 18th, and hopefully that won’t be the only time this month. In addition to the Gainesville gig, she’s also booked in Charleston, Athens, Tampa, Birmingham and Nashville in the surrounding days. This gives hardcore fans an opportunity to immerse themselves in one of the most dynamic live performers working today.
Liz Cooper & the Stampede first came to public view via their session on Audiotree Live, recorded in Chicago in October 2016. The first track was “Mountain Man”, an instant classic that remains arguably her definitive recording and the first thing I play for people who’ve never heard her before. She did another Audiotree session the following year, that one in front of an audience, and she did a third last year. Her debut album, “Window Flowers” (2018), was a masterpiece, and her high-energy performance style was helping her build a fiercely loyal fanbase, before the world went on pause.
Comparing “Hot Sass” to “Window Flowers”, it’s hard to think of a recent artist who has released two albums that were so completely different, in such a short period of time. “I wrote ‘Window Flowers’ when I was 20 or 21,” she says. “I turn 30 this year. It’s just a natural progression. I’m not going to make anything that’s not myself, so if it doesn’t resonate with people, that’s ok.” Having basically mastered a particular approach, early in her career, Cooper put it all aside and built herself a fresh new sound, from the ground up, and she did it in the middle of the most chaotic period in our lifetimes. That takes guts.
“I moved out of Nashville in November 2019,” she says, “and I was on the road for the rest of the year. I got here in January 2020, and I’ve been here ever since. I think it was a really big move for me, in terms of pushing out of my comfort zone. Everything was new to me.” It’s been good for her to be in Brooklyn, and it’s likewise been good for Brooklyn to have her there.
“I’m still trying to find my footing here,” she says. “It’s definitely an intimidating place to be, but I love it. I think you have to open yourself up to the city, for it to open up to you. It’s a completely different pace, and a completely different way of going about things, but yeah, I love it, and I hope that it loves me back.” No doubt about that, at all.
Cooper’s first big step into the post-pandemic era (which is still basically the pandemic era, but you know what I mean) was a streaming concert from the Mercury Lounge in New York that marked, for most of us, our first exposure to her new material. For hardcore fans, who basically went a couple of years without regular updates on what she was working on, the differences in sight and sound between the Liz Cooper of 2021 and the Liz Cooper of 2019 was profound, almost abrupt in feel. But the process of evolution was much more holistic, for the artist herself.
“I think I just immersed myself completely in this world, to the point that it felt natural. Nothing felt like it wasn’t me. Everything was really organic. It was very me and what was going on in my life at the time. It’s been a really natural shift, to me, but I know that it doesn’t seem that way, to others. To anyone who knows me, they know that this makes sense.”
Aside from the actual music, which is great, the album itself is gorgeous. “Hot Sass” comes as two pieces of see-through red vinyl, with each record imprinted with graphics from the album art. There’s also a double-sided poster that doubles as the liner notes. “My manager, Kara Merendino, took the photograph,” she says. “Kara and my former bass player, Grant Prettyman, did the packaging for the record.”The album is also available on CD and cassette.
A lot of artists have an established songwriting process, a collection of habits and best practices that works like clockwork to generate new material. Not so much for Liz Cooper, to whom every song dictates its own development. “It depends on the song, and the time,” she says. “I’ve been trying to write for the past month, and it’s been definitely different, and harder than I remember. It’s been a long time since I’ve written, and I think it’s just about being open to different processes. What I’m still learning is that it’s going to be different, because it’s supposed to be different. Doing the same thing, over and over, just results in the same art.”
When asked what she likes about Florida, Cooper’s answer comes instantly: “It’s warm, and it’s weird,” she says, laughing over Zoom in a black Sonic Youth t-shirt. “The people are strange, not everybody, and it’s fun. It’s a completely different animal. A lot of bands don’t usually tour through Florida, because it’s so big and so out of the way, depending on where you’re based out of. For me and my band, we’ve never really toured through Florida, though we have played Tampa and Jacksonville before.”
Sadly, Cooper and crew are arriving in Gainesville too late for pizza at Leonardo’s, which is bad news for Usher, who plays with such verve and vigor that he does truly need as many calories as humanly possible. “Ryan loves a slice,” she says, “so he’ll be disappointed.”
https://highdivegainesville.com/events/463863-liz-cooper-the-hot-sass-tour/
