At 28, Lissie is still growing up -- musically, that is. On her debut album, "Catching a Tiger," the folkie seamlessly breaks into cross-genre terrain, playing with a backing band for the first time.
"I love folk music and I'm very inclined to pick up an acoustic guitar and really not need anything to clutter it," Lissie said by phone, tucked away in her van somewhere in Norway. "But also with my band I play electric guitar and we have a bigger sound."
"Catching a Tiger," released by the influential indie Fat Possum in the U.S., runs the gamut from the country-bop of "Little Lovin'" to the hymn-like "Oh Mississippi" and the pop-savvy single "When I'm Alone." Lissie doesn't hide the fact that she's out for a smash hit, and her pop sensibilities shine. When flirting with addictive refrains, it's easy to veer into obnoxiously catchy waters. But Lissie gracefully toes the line, occasionally overstepping but pulling back before being scolded.
It's perhaps a skill she could've used during her rebellious teenage years -- Lissie was expelled from her high school in Rock Island, Ill. "I kind of just had a mini-nervous breakdown and I ended up [being] like, 'I hate this place!'" Lissie said, declining to go into detail.
The production value on "Catching a Tiger" is a step up from her fetchingly minimal "Why You Runnin"' EP. While she's proud of "Tiger," Lissie admits to going through a learning curve during the recording process and feels a few tracks came out a bit "cheesy" and overproduced -- like "Cuckoo," a carefree tribute to her teenage angst.
Another hard-knock lesson came after a re-recording of "Everywhere I Go" in an attempt to win London radio play didn't turn out as planned. "It was a huge disaster," the singer/songwriter said, adding that in the future she won't try to please others with her music.
Nevertheless, if Lissie's musical career is still in its pubescent years, the awkwardness most of us experience during that stage doesn't show, whether she knows it or not. Musical adulthood for this blossoming folkstress should be a pop-tinged delight.
