Liz Lawrence's Vespers: Folk Tribute to Late Sister Jessie
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- Liz Lawrence releases Vespers on June 5, a stripped-back folk record written in a three-week burst six months after her sister Jessie died suddenly at age 35 in 2024 following an accident in Ireland, where Jessie had been holidaying with her partner and two small children.
- Vespers marks a sharp departure from Lawrence's earlier indie pop — which had earned her tour support with Bombay Bicycle Club, the Big Moon, and Everything Everything — in favor of self-produced, elegiac folk with delicate string arrangements.
- Lawrence returned to music via female vocalists including Lisa O'Neill, Adrianne Lenker, and Joanna Newsom, after initially losing all appetite for her work and saying she 'didn't have any appetite' for making music in the months after Jessie's death.
- Lawrence initially considered releasing Vespers only on vinyl to roughly 100 people with no Spotify or digital presence, telling the Guardian she wanted to 'quantify the perceived success' of the record by the depth of listener connection — before making peace with a full commercial release.
- Songs like Sister, Birthday Party, and Where Did You Go capture specific grief moments — the reflex to text her dead sister's number, the funeral's uncanny pageantry, and her niece's first birthday without her mother: 'Make a wish / That can come true / Not the one / That's impossible.'
- Lawrence described finding a Reddit 'best grief albums' thread dominated by angry male rock and metal records when she was seeking 'open and frank sadness' — a gap she says Vespers was built to fill, and one she hopes earns the album a place on that same list.
Why it matters: Lawrence built Vespers to fill a gap she found in Reddit's 'best grief albums' lists, which she said skewed toward angry male rock and metal rather than the 'open and frank sadness' she was seeking. She initially wanted to limit the album to about 100 vinyl copies before making peace with full commercial release, and the record lands as a direct counter to the gendered templates of mainstream grief music.
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