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Sifting through new bands is ultimately a pleasant task, though inherently flawed – everyone has experienced expressing dislike for a specific band only to later find that actually they’re rather good. So it was with Lissie, whom I initially dismissed as another lightweight country-folk-esque crooner.
Now of course, I feel foolish, as I mistook the simplicity of her genuinely heartfelt and utterly charming songs for an absence of substance.
My apologies for such callous cynicism are soundtracked by such delightful songs as Little Lovin’, that begins as a quaint love song and morphs unceremoniously into a foot-stomping paean to desire.
And Wedding Bells may well take a well-worn woe-is-me failure-in-love path, but is so engagingly downtrodden and shuffling that only the coldest of hearts could hold it against her.
Lissie is a Mississippian via Paris, London and LA. Her wanderlust coils, ribbon-like, through her songs. Quite frankly, her songs and her voice are a dream, and we’re just all playing bit-parts as she sweetly dictates the terms. And if that sounds hopelessly besotted, it’s because I am. A delight.
Photography by Andrew Calder