Last we heard of Miss Lorson was 1993’s darkly expressionistic mood record, ‘Piano Creeps’ with partner Billy Cote. It was a good album, sensitively compiled and executed but a little lacking in the actual ‘songs’ department, so it comes as a pleasant surprise to find Mary in robust lyrical health and chirping as sprightly and as brightly as a nightingale once again. So what’s changed? Well, there was the birth of Mary and Billy’s son, Roman and Mary’s recovery from breast cancer for starters.
Cheerful, tactile and literally sighing with relief ‘Realistic’ bounces joyfully between the resilience, humility and maturity of ‘Born Knowing’ and ‘Dangerous’ and the buoyant clarity of ‘Walking Man’. There’s also the odd socio-political song also like the chipper and sentimental country inflected ballad, ‘Serenade’ as well as a prettily elegiac, piano-led tribute to the late Elliot Smith in the song, ‘Lonely Boy’.
‘Realistic’ is very much the sound of one woman mulling over the cost of changes; both to herself and the world around her. Seldom rising above the tinkling of ivories, the sizzle of brush upon cymbal or the swell of a minor chord, it’s sincere, warm and occasionally very beautiful. If it does have any faults, it’s that the record practically drowns in the milk of its own human kindness, but bearing in mind the emotional churn from which it sprang in the first place, it’s entirely forgivable. Few people have call to feel this good. Mary Lorson is one of them.