Lissie gets trapped by the mainstream aspirations of Sony UK
Listening to Lissie’s major label debut is a familiar experience, in that she’s not the first artist to surrender the organic qualities of her roots in the process of aiming for a larger audience. Where her debut EP, Why You Runnin’, turned deeply confessional moments into arresting outbursts of emotion, her follow-up feels forcedly written, sung and played. Where the debut offered the studio as a space in which Lissie could be heard singing, the album is filled with placeless overproduction that, aside from the quality of Lissie’s voice, sounds disappointingly like other pop records on the market. The edginess that made Lissie’s earlier vocals so magnetic is lost here as she’s forced to compete with gratuitously busy arrangements; it feels as if the producers didn’t trust her voice to keep listeners’ attention.
The double-tracked “Stranger†does provide a clever modern twist on Buddy Holly and Bobby Fuller, but it’s only a moment’s respite from the album’s banal guitar solos and pop-rock arrangements. The minutes of deep artistic accomplishment belong to the songs brought forward from the EP: “Little Lovin’,†“Everywhere I Go†and “Oh Mississippi.†On these, Lissie’s voice is riveting, the arrangements build tension rather than volume, and the instruments create atmosphere rather than distracting complexity. Lissie’s moving, gospel-based homage to the mother river is perfectly set to a sparse arrangement of piano, chorus and distant tambourine, and the spine-tingling emotion shot into lyrics like “danger will follow me, now, everywhere I go†are unmatched by any of the newer performances.
It’s still difficult to reconcile the harrowing portraits of Phil Spector presented by Mark Ribowsky and Mick Brown with the heart-tugging legacy of the Wall of Sound. The awe-inspiring images of the teen tycoon depicted by Tom Wolfe and Richard Williams now seem whitewashed, but they make lovely companions to the heart and soul still heard in Spector’s records.
Spector apparently loved the celebration of Christmas so much that he claimed to have been born on December 25th, but most reliable records now date his birth to December 26, 1940, making today his 70th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mr. Spector.
2010 was another great year for reissues, new issues of archival material and new albums by heritage artists. Far and away the most revelatory listening experience of the year was the 15-CD set of Hank Williams’ Mothers’ Best radio transcriptions. The earlier musical excerpts (released in 2008 as The Unreleased Recordings) was a revelation in its presentation of a parallel Hank Williams performance catalog, but the unedited programs brilliantly flesh Williams out as an entertainer, band leader, friend and human being.
Artists, particularly those on indie and self-made labels, continue to provide on-line streams and track downloads to catch listeners’ ears. Aggregators like Hype Machine and Elbows provide a quick way to hear what bloggers are writing about. Unfortunately, the major labels continue to shy away from this promotional avenue, and an affordable, legal licensing scheme for bloggers and podcasters continues to be elusive for commercially controlled music.
That said, here (in alphabetical order) are my favorites from among what I heard in 2010. Click through the album titles to find full-length reviews.
The Seekers stretch the folk revival into 1965
