By Jim Barber
Moving is never easy. Moving countries is endlessly stressful and frustrating. Moving from a country that has a restrictive, isolationist government to one where ‘freedom’ is celebrated and mythologized, and trying to start a new life in these unfamiliar and sometimes chaotic surroundings – that’s a tough ride for anyone.
Imagine you’re a talented, highly creative and sensitive artist or musician, not only striving to adapt to this new life, new surroundings and new culture, but trying to also connect with audiences in this new environment with your music.
That’s what the four members of Cuba-American rock band Sweet Lizzy Project have been doing since they left their homeland and emigrated to the United States more than eight years ago. It’s been a whirlwind, mostly a positive one, ever since, as the band has settled down in Nashville, one of the music capitals of North America, building up a reputation throughout much of the U.S. for their incredibly energetic and compelling live shows and the excellence of their craft as songwriters. They’ve written, recorded and released three full albums, and regularly host online shows from their rehearsal space on various social media platforms, building up an audience the old-fashioned way – through talent and hard work.
But at some point, all the change, all the newness, all the adrenaline and focused energy, the travel, the steep cultural learning curve catches up to even the hardiest of souls. And it’s happened to frontwoman Lisset Diaz. A powerhouse of a performer, and a brilliant lyricist, she along with partner Miguel Colas form the creative heart of the band. And that heart is most likely to be found on the sleeve and deeply embedded into the songs created Diaz and her partner.
Well, with their latest album Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, the fallout from the stormy emotional battering and the roller coaster ride of life since coming to America has gushed out in a robustly compelling, enchanting and inspiring way.
It’s an album about change, about growth, about facing one’s demons and being unafraid to talk about not only the good, but the bad and ugly of life. It’s dripping with authenticity and truth telling, and is as boldly introspective, as it is highly identifiable for anyone who has had complicated relationships with the vagaries and vicissitudes of life.
One significant change is a most obvious one to those who have been following Sweet Lizzy Project for any length of time. When their album Technicolour was released in 2020, there were seven people in the press photos. Today, two albums later, there are just four.
“When we came from Cuba nearly nine years ago, we were seven. Changing to a new country is a big deal. And not only a new country, but the lifestyle is so much different. It was a big change, so I don’t judge. I don’t blame anyone. People react differently to stress and just life. So, we lost two members by the end of the Technicolour recording. Probably when we last spoke we were down to five,” said Diaz over Zoom from the back deck of her home in Nashville.
“Then more recently, like a year ago, our previous bass player finally was able to bring his wife here from Cuba, and he decided to go the family route. It was not a good match with the whole touring life and the musician’s life. So, that happened, but again, we’re super happy for him.”
The other two members of Sweet Lizzy Project are bass player Wilfredo Gatell, and drummer Angel Luis Millet. Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear is the band’s fourth album overall, and third since coming to the U.S.A. Heaven was released in Cuba in 2015, and Technicolour coming in 2022 after the move to Nashville. Pirate Radio was released in both English and Spanish in 2022.
Another seismic shift in the life and career landscape for Diaz and the band is that this new album was released independently. After two years on a small, but well-respected boutique label, Sweet Lizzy Project band members wanted to have complete creative independence, but also to have complete control over the more practical and business-oriented decision-making process.
“After Pirate Radio, we went completely independent. This is out first full-length album that we’ve done completely independently. I think, on the whole, the record deal was good for what it was at the time. But we felt that it was just not a good fit for us any longer. When we fulfilled our commitment, which was those two records, we decided that we wanted to try something different. Nothing terrible happened, but when you work with record labels they make decisions that you didn’t always agree with. I felt like we were waiting too long to put music out, for example, and that’s something I didn’t like. And it’s something that we changed immediately after we went independent, so we were able to start putting music out into the world when we wanted to, as often as we wanted. We wanted to be able to create music and then put it out right away. Why wait a year or two to create a full album and then put it out. For this record we just started releasing singles and then the album,” Diaz said, adding that she and the band are grateful for what the label did for them in navigating the music business in a new country.
“When we got that record deal and we were working with the people at the label, they helped lot, especially when we first got here from Cuba. Thanks to that record deal, we landed in Nashville. So that was a big plus. At the time, we didn’t know anything about anything. They were our introduction to this country, not only in the professional sense, but even in the personal world as well. It took us a little while to find our footing, to find out what we wanted and the way we wanted to do the work, and it took a while longer for us to realize the things we were actually capable of. Which is what we’re doing now. We’re not saying that we’re not open to the possibility of working with a record label again in the future. It’s just that we are not there anymore. So, we decided to go independent.”
There has also been a noticeable change in Diaz herself. As the frontwoman and one of the primary songwriters alongside Comas, there is a new air of earnestness, a steelier exterior, and this adds a gravity to the songs on Objects In The Mirror… The more introspective tone, the more passionately expressive lyrics, the more insistent instrumentation, reflects a shift in thematic and emotional centre of what is driving the band at this point in their careers, and particularly the words and melodies Diaz is creating.
A keen observer would see that if you were to examine the album art and promotional and marketing material from both Technicolour and Pirate Radio, there is a vibrancy, a sense of joyousness. The album cover, promotional photos and marketing materials for Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear almost exclusively black and white, with shades of gray. It’s not that the music is dark and gloomy, it’s just that the bubbly positivity that has been a hallmark of Sweet Lizzy Project has been tempered and infused with those proverbial shades of gray on an emotional level.
“I think it was just a natural consequence of our process and evolution as humans and as artists. I actually didn’t notice that contrast, to be honest. To me, this album is very personal. We worked on it for two years, and I’m counting that from when we did ‘Somebody Wake Me When It’s Over,’ which was the first single. That one we put out in October 2023, which is when I count when we started working on the album. But the theme of this album is really the story of the band during the years since Pirate Radio came out. We’ve been together for 12 years and the last eight of those we’ve been here in the United States. I think that even though it’s been eight years, there are feelings and emotions and situations that you don’t process immediately, especially when you’ve been as busy as we’ve been,” said Diaz.
“The process of becoming an immigrant, of separating yourself from everything you used to know and kind of becoming a new person – because it’s definitely a new life – takes its toll in a different way for everybody. And it takes time to process that. It takes time to realize, that I am not the person I was eight years ago or nine years ago. I feel like that’s the full cycle I experienced when writing this album. I feel like in many ways the music is new because we’ve evolved musically. But at the same time, I think we also went back to the beginning of the band. I feel like I’m trying to process the way I’ve managed to live this journey as part of band. That’s what I love about this album. So, yeah, it’s black and white because it’s raw and honest.”
In a sense, as Diaz says, it’s as though her mind, body and spirit are just now catching up to all the feelings of newness, of anxiety, of dislocation, of sorrow from missing friends and family, but also the countervailing feelings of excitement, freedom and the joyfulness of having a brave new world in which to live, love and create.
“It can get dark when I talk about it. I feel like I am still figuring it all out. Twelve years ago, I was at school. I became a biochemist. My life was completely different in Cuba. Just the fact of being in Cuba and being completely isolated from the rest of the world in so many ways, that was my life back then. And then, for some reason, I started writing songs. So, this is me processing my journey. I started writing songs and very quickly that became something completely different for my life. When I think about it now, the people I used to know, the friends I used to have, the routine I used to have is completely different. That life became a different country, with a different language, with things like car insurance and 50 brands of toilet paper, you name it. The changes from one life to the next go from the very small ones to very big ones,” she said.
“From a personal standpoint, it’s been hard. I’ve experienced depression. I’ve experienced anxiety. I’ve experienced an identity crisis. I recently went back to Cuba for personal reasons, a family emergency. It was very sad to see what my country has become. But at the same time, seeing my people again, and I mean my people in a very romantic way, because I’ve met really great people here. I consider them my family; they’re my best friends now. But seeing my Cuban people, their struggle, the way they’re living their lives – that could have been my life as well. It’s like having the culture shock again, but in reverse. It was a very powerful sense of community that I had not experienced in a while, because I hadn’t been back to Cuba for about three years.
“It’s almost like a PTSD situation [there’s a song on the new album called ‘Ptsd’]. By no means do I want to sound like I’ve got my shit together. I’m not there yet. But I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, ‘okay, this is what is happening,’ and I’m taking responsibility for all those feelings. I am going to write them down and I am going to sing about it. I’m going to put it all out there because it’s part of my process. So, yeah, this is what the album is. It’s about taking responsibility for all those feelings and acknowledging what’s going on, and what has been going on for a while.”
It’s a well-worn cliché, but sayings and cliches become such because there is usually deep-seated truth behind them. For Diaz, the process of taking those thoughts and feelings and experiences and emptying them on the metaphorical page into words and melodies is truly ‘therapy.’
“It really is, and I also love that it’s been therapy for other people as well. Every time I put a song out that is so personal, like ‘Somebody Wake Me When It’s Over,’ people will say, ‘what are you talking about? Why are you so unhappy? Why are you depressed? What’s going on? Why are you so dark?’ But for that song, I got an opposite response. The song resonated with a lot of people. They were telling me the song helped them get through this or that. I’m happy that it was also therapy for them, but at the same time it makes me feel, okay, I’m not alone – and they’re not alone either. It helps to put things out there and be able to communicate through music with other people,” she said.
“I am a different person as I said. We talked, maybe five years ago? It’s not that long ago, but I do feel like I’m a different person now. Back then, it’s not like I was pretending, but I did feel like I always needed to colour my words or my feelings to make them more digestible for people. Now, I’m not like that anymore. This is who I am, this is what I want to say, and you can like it or not. And this is my journey. This album is my journey, our journey as people and as a band. And the album, all the songs it’s all part of that story. For me, the whole album feels like a story from start to finish. From a musical standpoint, Miguel tried to make it as cinematic as possible with the music, and having the intro and outro. So, I hope it comes across that way for people when they listen to it. But for me, it’s like different stages of my story.
“And it goes from that, from anxiety, from frustration, from feeling kind of alone a lot. But I hope that people who listen to the album see that it’s not dark. The ultimate feeling that I want people to feel is that it’s a celebration of our journey, because I feel very proud of what we’ve accomplished as a band and as individuals. And that’s also about myself – I feel very proud of myself. It’s important to acknowledge the things that you’ve done, and you need to feel proud about yourself. This is the message I want to put out for everybody listening to the album. Think about and focus on the good things you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished and feel proud of yourself.”
The title track for Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear didn’t start life as a full-on song, according to Diaz.
“It was just supposed to be the intro for the album. But then it became a song. When we recorded it, we realized that it had to be a full song and the first song on the album, but also the first song for the live show. And it sort of became the theme too. The interesting thing about this album is we released five songs before it came out, and then the other five songs only came out on the album. ‘Player 2’ was one of the last songs we added to the album, but it’s actually the oldest song on the album. I wrote that song back in 2020 and we never used it for Pirate Radio. When we put together Pirate Radio, it was a different theme. We were talking about Cuba, and it was a concept album, so ‘Player 2’ was not a good fit. But I always loved that song, and I thought it would be great to have kind of an older song as a per of a record that is talking about a journey. So, it was great to have that one on the record,” she said, before discussing one of the tracks on the album generating the most positive acclaim from fans and audiences, a genuine banger called ‘How You Like Me Now?’
“That song? That’s a song about revenge. It’s about feeling vengeful and how we fight it and how we’re taught that it’s bad and that you shouldn’t feel that way. But it’s also so natural, it’s human nature, and not in a super evil way, when you kind of hope unpleasant things happen to people that did something bad to you. And it doesn’t have to be as serious as death or cancer. It may be, ‘I hope she gets bubble gum stuck in her hair,’ or something like that. Just some sort of punishment. And that’s what this song is about. Because as much as I understand that those are not healthy feelings, those were part of my journey as well. When I felt attacked. When I felt like life was unfair, that bad things were happening to me for absolutely no freaking reason, those feelings were there. And I was, like, ‘how am I gong to talk about my journey and my feelings without being this honest;’ where I am not just ‘sweet’ Lizzy, where I’m not just talking about beautiful things, but where I am putting myself in the place of a victim or a perfect person that is blaming others for the band things that are happening.’ No, I’m also human and I felt things I’m not proud of.
“But at the same time, I’m pretty sure everybody out there is not a saint. So, everybody’s felt this way at some point. So that’s what the song is about. And it’s called ‘How You Like Me Now?’ because I’m asking are you still going to love me after saying that I felt this way? And I’m dreaming about people needing me in the same way I needed them at some point, but they didn’t help. Am I going to be in that position of power at some point? Again, those are not pretty feelings, not feelings I’m proud of, but unfortunately those are real feelings too. And when I said I feel attacked, I’m not talking about one person. Sometimes you feel like life is attacking you in some way. Things are not happening the way you’re expecting, and of course you tend to blame others. But like I said, part of this album is also about me taking responsibility for my own mistakes and the things that I did wrong. So, I guess being under attack could be self sabotage. I could be attacking myself, my own head, my own thoughts, my own mind. I’m sometimes my own worst enemy.”
The song ‘Lusion’ was one of the earlier tracks released before the album came out, and at the moment, Diaz says it’s her favourite song on the album.
“Although my favourite changes from time to time. Every time I write a new song, that becomes my favourite for a while, but then I kind of go back to when the emotion of the new creation fades, and I go back to my all-time favourite. And I think that’s been ‘Lusion.’ I love the music. I love the lyrics. I love the different parts of the song. I think it’s a very entertaining song because it changes. The verses are all different. I was listening to a lot of Falling in Reverse when I wrote that song. It has a lot of anger, and it was one of the darker songs on the album,” she said, adding the song was born out of the frustration the band was feeling after Pirate Radio failed to meet their commercial expectations.
“When we finished Pirate Radio, it was also available in Spanish as Radio Pirata, I experienced a lot of frustration and anger. We all did, because we thought that the album was going to get a lot bigger than it did. We thought it was going to get a lot more support. It was supposed to get a lot more support than what it actually got. And it was kind of the end of our relationship with our previous team, the team we had been working with. It felt like the end of the band for us. That was the first time I thought about quitting. I didn’t think I wanted to be doing this anymore. So, that song came out of those feelings. That’s why I sound so angry. It was a very powerful and empowering song to write. And, again, when I put it out there, when I’m saying what I am feeling, it felt so much better. Ok, maybe I won’t quit now. I just needed to talk about it, to get those feelings out in the open.”
‘Buzzkill’ is one of the harder rockin’ tracks on Objects In the Mirror Are Closer Than The Appear and began life from some unique musical ideas that came from the creatively fertile mind of Comas.
“That one was brought to the table by Miguel. For some songs, when I come up with the idea, I feel more like I know the song already because it’s all in my head. This one took me a minute because Miguel said, ‘I’ve got this idea.’ So, we worked on it. I was not super convinced at first, but then when we really started to dig into it, I absolutely loved the song. And it turned out to be one of the fan favourites, because it’s so great live,” Diaz explained.
“Again, it’s a song about taking responsibility for the things that we’ve done wrong. I sort of take the fall again. I’m talking about feeling like I’ve been locked in a cage too long, but it’s my fault; it’s something I’m doing wrong. Why is it taking so damn long, like I’m on the scenic route. When is it going to click? When am I supposed to feel like I belong? It’s more about that personal experience of the fact that we’ve been doing this for so long, when is it going to click. And we named the song ‘Buzzkill’ because at first the rhythm of the song and the must made us think we were going to be writing about something different. We thought it was going to be more about a trip – that it was going to be more of a chill kind of song. But then my lyrics were kind of more personal and darker – again. It was about that frustration and what a buzzkill that was for us. We thought it was going to be more like a party song and then this is what we’re writing? So, we’re our own buzzkill. We are self-sabotaging again. We’re spoiling our own party.
“I think after getting a lot of these feelings out through the record I am in a good place now, or at least I think so. When you look at the really bad moments, and they were a while ago, you realize you’re still here and you feel like, ‘oh, I made it.’ I think what I’ve learned is that some feelings are not going to go away. I just need to cope with them and just realize that it’s all in my head and I just have to keep moving. I’m trying to rationalize all those things that happen every day. I think that’s what everybody does on some level; I think that’s a very human thing to do.”
What also helps keep the emotional darkness and intrusive, negative thoughts at bay is the live show, being able to have the connection with audiences and the release of energy, emotion and existential angst onstage.
“That’s the best part of what we do. It’s the best, and the tour for this new album has been amazing. You know, connecting with fans and meeting some of our fans for the first time has been amazing. We have an incredible online community that we’ve built over the years, especially after Pirate Radio, when we were ready to quit and all that, they supported us. Now we’re meeting some of them for the first time on the road, and it’s just amazing. It’s meant a lot of hours in that goddam minivan, I have to tell you, but it’s totally worth it,” Diaz said.
“And that’s what I love about going on the road, because you can actually be human and talk to people for real. You can hug people. You can have real conversations in person, which is, as you know, getting more and more weird these days with technology. So, I love doing that. I love hearing people’s personal experiences. We’re in this world for a very limited amount of time, so if we can get to as many places as possible and meet as many people as we can – that’s our goal.”
Sweet Lizzy Project is working to get shows along the U.S. west coast, particularly California, and Diaz said Canadian shows are a possibility down the road, as is Europe.
“That’s another dream we have, to get over to Europe. We will see, you never know, it’s definitely something we would love to do. And we have been talking about Canada for next year,” she said.
For more information on Sweet Lizzy Project, their touring plans and new music, visit www.sweetlizzyproject.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
