Shiver and Rush: Travel to America’s Ozarks with Izabel Crane

Crane Creek flows through sycamore and black oak trees down to Crane, a small Missouri town in America’s Ozark region. Shiver and Rush, the newest album by singer-songwriter Liz Carney, draws on Carney’s family history and the mystique of the Ozarks. A skillful storyteller, Caney takes on the pseudonym ‘Izabel Crane’, an amalgamation of her family nickname and hometown, to share her musical tales.

From the jangling guitar of the opening track Creature, listeners travel through a world of bramble-filled mountain passes and pristine, icy rivers.

“There are a lot of different places in the Ozarks I kept thinking about while writing this album,” said Carney. “There is a place called Wire Road in Crane that I thought a lot about while creating these songs. It has a small creek running through it, and Osage orange trees bow above the water. Not a lot of people walk through it…it always seems a little haunted from the trees and the solitude of the place.”

Like the subtle boundary between beauty and desolation depicted in many of the songs, the album also describes how fear can exist just below the surface in moments of joy.

“The title Shiver and Rush popped into my head when I found this picture of my grandmother being baptized,” said Carney. “That picture [which appears on the album cover] has a sort of violence to it. She’s being pulled out of the water, and I can almost hear her gasping for air.”

Carney explained how she and her grandmother each sought ways of escaping fear and pain in their lives, an experience captured in “Spring Fed River.” Evocative of American gospel music, the song describes a river baptism; the initial shock of immersing in cold water and the euphoria of coming up for air with a sense of salvation.

Carney listened to gospel as a child at the Baptist church her family attended, and another early musical influence was her father – a professional opera singer.

“I was surrounded by singing,” she said. “My mom would keep my brothers and I from flipping out on long car rides with rounds, and I learned how to sing harmony doing that. My brothers and I are all musicians because of our parents.”

Carney later studied jazz and played in the ensemble Bella Donna, and has a diverse roster of music projects under her belt, ranging from the folk duo the Lacewings to the electronic band Kids and Chemicals.

Her brother Patrick Carney, who also performs with Kids and Chemicals, appears on Shiver and Rush, and contributed the spare and beautiful track “Funeral.” It enhances the album’s folkloric atmosphere with a haunting tale about a standoff that ends with a torn photograph and a body lying among pines in the snow.

Liz Carney, lead singer of Izabel Crane, sat down with an Eastman E10OO-M at The Shoppe & performed a song her brother wrote called "Funeral" #iplayeastman #...

Carney performs a stripped-back version of “Funeral.”

Envisioned at one point as two related EPs, Shiver & Rush emerged slowly until Carney worried she might wear out the songs if she didn’t release them.

“I recorded many of these previously, but they didn’t sound quite right, so I scrapped them and changed them and made some of them more sparse and some much louder and gritty,” she said. “The song ‘Creature’ took me about five years to write and had many evolutions. I think it sounds right now.”

In addition to her brother, several of Carney’s favourite artists from the thriving local music scene of Springfield, Missouri, where she now lives, joined her for Shiver & Rush. The album features Jason Nunn, from the band Dream Ritual; cellist and violinist Molly Healey, who performs with Carney as the Lacewings; and singer-songwriter Jake Stringer. Engineer Adam Schroeller recorded the album at Sound Under Studio.

Releasing an album during the Coronavirus lockdown, Carney struggles like many artists to create an authentic connection with her audience through digital performances.

“I’ve been doing some Facebook Live shows from my home, and it feels strange and uncomfortable,” she said. “The energy of people is so important when I perform, and I don’t have the luxury of feeling that through a screen. It feels very sterile without the sounds and smells and sights in a venue with people in it.

The lockdown also keeps Carney from her regular work of repairing musical instruments, so she’s using the time to develop an entirely new set of skills: raising chickens, building a greenhouse, and tilling the earth with large machinery. She’s become an artist truly rooted in her local landscape.

Escape briefly from the lockdown and explore the Ozarks with Carney’s music. You’ll travel to a folkloric world where katydids hum and grackles call, and Osage orange trees grow over the water. Close your eyes, put on your headphones, and drift down Crane Creek with the exquisite musical storytelling of Shiver & Rush.

Find Liz Carney (Izabel Crane) on her website, Facebook, and Spotify.