Lizzie No with Beti Masenqo

After a dizzying five-year span that saw the release of two stunning, eclectic albums (Hard Won and Vanity, which drew praise from the likes of Billboard and Rolling Stone) — followed by appearances at AmericanaFest, the Newport Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and SXSW, and tours with Iron and Wine, Son Little, and Adia Victoria — Lizzie No found herself at the forefront of a new vanguard of genre-defying artists. Her new album, Halfsies (Thirty Tigers / Miss Freedomland), finds No situated among her peers while still searching for freedom — freedom from the constraints of categorization, sure, but more importantly, freedom from the depths of her own personal despair and from an increasingly violent and nightmarish American cultural and political landscape.

 

“Some albums are stories, some are films. This album is a video game,” No says of Halfsies, which traces the journey of Miss Freedomland (a character that represents No herself and her audience), from a place of both internal and external exile to liberation. The album, No says, is meant to be immersive — these songs are to be inhabited, not just by the singer but by those who receive them.

 

“If you’re in these songs with me, what seems at first like a journey of self-analysis becomes a journey to get free, and get your people free, as well.” No returns to the video game analogy. “I think of the character as being chased by what I can only describe as Pac-Man ghosts of white supremacy, moving through the levels of this game.”

 

On Halfsies, No’s writing is beautifully intricate, the personal and the political folding into each other as naturally as the patchwork of influences that inform the album’s eleven tracks. The album begins with the chaos and disorder of what No calls “the Street Level,” where the title track and “Lagunita” reflect the frantic energy of a character, and a country, gone off the rails. From the desolation and loneliness in the chorus of voices that come whispering through the walls in “Sleeping in the Next Room,” to the roadworn rock of “Annie Oakley,” (the ancestors beckoning from “the Spirit Level”) to the sprawling mid-apocalyptic yearning and, ultimately, deliverance of “Babylon,” No’s writing throughout the record serves as a living conversation with her influences — not just musical but literary — reflecting her reverence for a host of the great voices who came before her, from Lucinda Williams to Toni Morrison, and her search for a connection between them.

Betty Masenqo was born in Ethiopia and grew up in Northern California. She first started playing classical violin in her public school orchestra and in her Ethiopian church community, where people recognized her as the masenqo player (due to the similarity between the Ethiopian masenqo and western violin). Her music is inspired by what she listened to in her childhood and adolescence, which includes Ethiopian music, indie folk music, and classical music. Her songs reflect on her search for meaning and purpose as she navigates adulthood as an Ethiopian American and she hopes they provide comfort and an opportunity for reflection for all who listen.