Lissie - In Sleep

I'm typically wary of singer/songwriters in Lissie's position, e.g. strikingly beautiful women with powerful voices and (mostly) acoustic guitars. Colbie Caillat or Toby Lightman, anyone? The material, outside of a few major hits, either fades away without leaving much of an impression or plays it frustratingly safe. The hype builds and builds to the first record, then the law of diminishing returns sets in rather quickly. Record labels are frequently to blame here, as they tend to whitewash the more interesting tendencies of these women or just resign them to an A&R back seat (KT Tunstall's underrated Tiger Suit was a definite victim of this).

It took me a while to warm up to Lissie for these same reasons. I didn't want to be frustrated by a lack of artistry, I didn't want to get suckered in by a few amazing songs then be disappointed by the fact she couldn't fill out an album. I was definitely shut up. The album, Catching a Tiger, shows an artist directly descended from that husky-voiced, folk/rock lineage of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, and Stevie Nicks. She doesn't take the trite, overly sensitive acoustic route, she doesn't just pay lip service; her attitude and skill on record place her squarely in their midst. Seeing her intense, dextrous live show sealed the deal for me.

She rocks hard.

On "In Sleep," the production is clean and clear but not overly polished. It's a long-ish song for her genre, nearly five minutes. But by the time it boils over into a countrified version of Echo and the Bunnymen's "Killing Moon"in its last two minutes, you're hardly aware of the time that's passed.

Her guitar playing is intuitive and almost minimal, cutting a broad line underneath the brushed drums and slight whispers of synth that give the song most of its considerable tension and desert-at-dusk imagery. Lyrically, it's a darker twist on a "unrequited love" scenario, but her vulnerability here doesn't feel cloying or exploitative. Her attention-commanding voice is what gives the song most of its attack and release dynamic, and it injects some serious grit and emotion into her rather bleak words, in which sleep is the one place she can feel happy and the waking world promises loneliness. It helps the song to maintain balance between the darker musings of the lyrics and the tension of the music.

So, yeah, definitely kicking myself a little that it took two years for me to fully catch on.