When Liz Horsman was just four years old, her local football team Ipswich Town, were in the midst of their glory years. Bobby Robson was the club s manager and the young Liz was regularly granted the honour of running out onto the pitch with the team. Bobby was a good friend of my parents and we always went to the matches together, she recalls. He d let me hang around with the team on matchday, as a sort of unofficial mascot.
How times have changed. Robson went onto greater things with the national side while Ipswich Town who won the FA Cup in 1978, have just narrowly missed promotion to the Premiership. As for the young cheerleader, she grew up fast, picked up a guitar and aligned herself with yet another Bobby this time of the Dylan variety.
I don t have too many friends who like Bob Dylan, she concedes. In fact I don t have any. They say he can t sing, can t write but he s one of my main influences.
At 23, Horsman exudes the poise and confidence of someone at least a decade older. Her recently released debut album Heavy High reflects her predilection for wordy songsmiths. Part-produced by Stephen Street and with instrumental assistance from Blur s Graham Coxon and Sleeper s John Stewert it has been widely hailed as an assured debut winning her comparisons with everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Beth Orton.
Songs such as the world-weary title track and Romanticise reveal a musical maturity rare in someone of her generation. Horseman puts it all down to the music of the 1980 s.
It was totally crap, she reflects. When I was growing up it was all Spandau Ballet and Howard Jones. The first record I bought was Michael Jackson s Billie Jean which wasn t all that bad, but I was immune to most of what was happening during that period. I got into The Cure eventually but funnily enough I never got into The Smiths. It was only when baggy stuff like The Charlatans and Happy Mondays came along that I began to listen to music from my own contemporaries.
It was through her dad s record collection that she became exposed to the likes of Dylan, Nick Drake, The Beatles and The Kinks influences she regards as vital to her songwriting approach. Dad played guitar at home all the time and did versions of all those classics so I got used to hearing them, she says. Because of that I m into songs, not sounds. Lyrics are important to me. I think they should reveal something about the writer. It s important to say what you want to say. Songs like Jeff Buckley s Lover, You Should Have Come Over or Northern Sky by Nick Drake affect me in that way.
Horseman is signed to Food Records the home of such seminal acts as Blur and The Supernaturals. Unusually, and against current trends, the album boasts bigger than average production credits along with Stepehen Street they include Mike Spencer (Definition of Sound) Bird and Bush (The Stereophonics), and Phil Thornalley (The Cure).
I didn t really plan it that way, Horsman offers. It all came together in the studio and for some reason I ended working with loads of different people. Even though I ve done plenty of gigs on my own, a lot of these songs need to be played with the a band. That s how I ll be doing it for the foreseeable future.
Finally, how does she think Bobby Robson would feel about his little team mascot now?
I still keep in touch with him, she says. He s a lovely guy, he sent me a nice note when the album came out and he came to my mum s birthday party recently. n
Heavy High is released on Food Records