In a previous life, Lizabett Russo might have been burned as a witch, such is her otherworldly charm. This Romanian singer/songwriter, now based in Edinburgh, has a singular voice to make you sit up and listen in the first instance, but also to beguile with an ethereal potency, placing her in a spellbinding lineage from Kate Bush through Laura Marling to Kathryn Joseph.
Russo hails from Transylvania but only took up singing when she moved to Scotland in her late teens to study at Aberdeen University, developing her voice at open mics on a gap year in London.
She already has a modest catalogue of self-released albums but While I Sit and Watch This Tree is an impressive place to make her accomplished acquaintance, all the more so given that it was recorded at home during lockdown with her partner, composer/guitarist Graeme Stephen, and embellished with remote contributions from guest players including fiddler Aidan O’Rourke.
The gently percussive Two Hands Together is a persuasive primer with its subtle shades of East European folk and a certain irresistible invocation in Russo’s clear voice. She taps into Celtic mysticism on the captivating Depending with its soft, subtly dynamic tapestry of acoustic sounds.
Elegant horns, plangent cello and Yiddish chant dapple the autobiographical I Was Young When I Left Home (“I never knew where I belonged”). Later, Russo pays tribute to her adopted home with a beautifully arranged cover of mellifluous, melancholy Scottish folk song The Water Is Wide, and closes this intoxicating half hour with the beatific Romanian language Valuri si Ganduri (“waves and thoughts”).