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Let’s time warp back to April, back when it was just over a year of lockdowns, restrictions, fear (and loathing), and a sense of exhaustion reigned globally. It was glum, in short. But in the bleakness, Liz Stringer<\/a> released her sixth album, First Time Really Feeling<\/em><\/a>. On it, she revealed the newfound sobriety that it took until her late 30s to embrace. It is a confessional album, her most honest to date by her own admission in multiple interviews. The country, rockin\u2019 folk vibe sonically is warm and lush and the straight-talking lyrics are unvarnished and untarnished by a haze of alcohol and hangovers. It marked two years since she’d been feted at Woodford Folk Festival in 2019 by fellow performers Catherine MacLellan, Tim Levinson, Jessie Lloyd and Jeff Lang, who paid tribute to her catalogue to date by covering their favourite Stringer songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In October the same year, Stringer joined fellow musos Jen Cloher and Mia Dyson for the second time since releasing a 2013 tour EP<\/a> to record their debut Dyson Stringer Cloher<\/a><\/em> LP. The album was a celebration of some of Melbourne\u2019s finest songwriters, voices and guitar talent, though Stringer had moved to Toronto a year earlier to avoid the party scene she\u2019d become prey to in Melbourne. As she told Conor Lochrie at Tone Deaf<\/a>: \u201cFor me there was a lot of grief in getting sober, against all the amazing stuff. There was a period of having to mourn my life that I had been living for around 20 years. That was a big reason why I left and moved to Canada in 2018 because I couldn\u2019t be around here, it was too triggering. Everywhere I went I remembered getting shitfaced there or hanging out there or going to the party there. It was constant!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Melbourne has welcomed her back with open arms, though \u2013 her album received praise widely in media and she\u2019s got tours booked<\/a> through the end of 2021 and early 2022. She had been touring with Dyson and Cloher in 2019 until the borders closed and she found herself inadvertently but willingly back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stringer\u2019s sisterhood of songwriters did not begin and end with Dyson and Cloher. In 2008, she\u2019d been invited by\u00a0the esteemed singer-songwriter Deborah Conway\u00a0to take part in the\u00a0Broad Festival project. The Australia-wide tour was a vehicle for\u00a0Stringer, Laura Jean,\u00a0Dianna Corcoran\u00a0and\u00a0Elana Stone\u00a0to perform their own work and reinterpret each other\u2019s songs on stage. It has never been lost on her industry cohorts that in Stringer, the strength of her songwriting and performing \u2013 travelling the country-roots-folk route – are a phenomenon and have been since Soon<\/a><\/em>, her 2006 debut. That was followed by Pendulum<\/a><\/em> in 2008, Tides of Time<\/a><\/em> in 2010, Warm in the Darkness<\/a><\/em> in 2012, Live at the Yarra<\/a><\/em> in 2014, and All the Bridges<\/a><\/em> in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was fortuitous and fitting that Cloher\u2019s Milk! Records<\/a> (founded with Courtney Barnett) signed Stringer in February, merely two months before she dropped First Time Really Feeling<\/em> \u2013 easily her most raw, real album to date. The album, as much as it is about Melbourne and the weight of addiction on her mind and body, was recorded in Toronto in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I made the record, it took so long to bring out, because I didn\u2019t have anyone,\u201d she told Lochrie<\/a>. \u201cI was totally on my own, I had no money, I was in Toronto working as a session musician. And I just knew instinctively that either I put this album out well or I just don\u2019t. I thought maybe that\u2019s it, maybe I\u2019m done. Then ironically during the pandemic it came together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n