ALBUM REVIEW: With ‘Deep Feeler,’ Liv Greene Gets to Know Herself, and Invites Us To, Too

The scary side effect of really getting to know yourself is the sudden inability to be anything but honest. Liv Greene has learned that in the sweetest way, spinning self-awakening into the golden-hued songs that make up her second album Deep Feeler. Self-care mingles with harsh realities, deep comfort with a restless spirit and fierce determination, all rooted in a no-frills, acoustic sound that lets her lyrics and vocals radiate.

Greene has the kind of classic, timeless singing voice that feels like one you’ve always known. It cracks and flows effortlessly, a river that knows exactly where it’s headed. The same can be said of the theme of Deep Feeler, a record always feeling its way forward, through tears, joy, clouds, and sunshine.

Greene opens with the title track, her opus. A vulnerable dig into the muck of her flaws and sometimes unbearable self-awareness, “Deep Feeler” is a tune that practically demands repeat listens. Each return to it yields some new nugget of understanding, a little piece of broken mirror reflecting you back at yourself, whether or not you want to see it. It is a bare-faced confrontation with herself that becomes yours too, a realization that she cannot turn off her most emotional parts.

A mellow ease takes over the album, whether Greene is mending her broken heart with “two buck chuck Cabernet Sauvignon” and overpriced roses on “Flowers,” finding the silver lining in walking away on “I Can Be Grateful,” or accepting the inevitable without letting it define her or get her down on “Wild Geese.”

Things pick up with the driving “I’ve Got My Work to Do,” a twangy self-imposed challenge to figure things out on her own before settling down. “I wanna get dirt on my hands and be proud to fuck it up/before I get it right,” she sings, “I don’t want to hesitate or apologize/I’ve done that so much of my life.” As she does on the title track, Greene is putting her desires right out in the open—a terrifying leap with an uncertain outcome. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so they say, and with Deep Feeler, it’s never been truer.

Liv Greene’s Deep Feeler released on Oct. 18 on Free Dirt Records.