Lissie Catching A Tiger (Columbia)
2/5
By: Theo Krekis
Wet, wet, wet. Unfortunately, the use of repetition here isn’t a direct reference to Marti Pellow’s phenomenal nineties pop band, but instead a common literary device to reinforce the notion that what we’re dealing with here is sopping, soaking, dripping wet.
Lissie, a girl too cool to share her second name (it’s Maurus if you were the tiniest bit curious), has emerged from the woodwork with an attempt to revive a sound I’m pretty sure KT Tunstall already exhausted many years ago. Suddenly, I see – this isn’t a great start for Lissie.
Yet perhaps I’m being a little too hasty, too immediately negative towards a lady who has succeeded in creating music which, though might be considered a little too generic, certainly ticks boxes that many people want to see ticked. It’s got all the right the build ups, break downs, key changes and insistently uses that ‘Yeah-e-yeah-e-yeah’ thing that’s actually code for ‘I’m not a lyricist!’. But I just find it impossible to care deeply for an album which is so reminiscent of a sound that failed to grab me in the first place. Strumming an acoustic guitar and singing with your eyes closed is not only not enough, but there’s way too much of it about.
Yet it would be unfair to say Catching A Tiger is a total disaster – it isn’t. There are a fair few tracks here destined for the radio, and when they come on in a rush hour, instead of a scene unfolding in which you scream at your car stereo and punch the channel over to The Archers, I’ll wager you’ll just sit there, happily enough, tapping your hand on the steering wheel and humming those lyrics. ‘Yeah-e-yeah-e-yeah...’
Which tracks, exactly? ‘When I’m Alone’ and ‘Worried About’ are likely to be the tunes to propel this pretty blonde’s career to the next stage, but it’s the slower, wound-down moments like ‘Everywhere I Go’ and ‘Bully’, with their overly soppy piano interludes and quite nothing-y lyrics asking about “which way to go?” that really do Lissie (Maurus) no favours.
Artists in this article: Lissie
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