When my wife and I sit down to our evening meal, odds are high that we're playing a record by Lissie (rhymes with "Missy," not "busy"). She and our day-end dining are close to inseparable. Indeed, when Heather phoned from a D.C. Starbucks to report that our favorite singer-songwriter-guitarist's music was playing there, and I asked “Which song?”, the reply was: “Something from dinner.”
Dinner got even better when the prolific, eclectic Rock Island, Ill.-born folk / roots / rock/ Western / alt-pop musician put out a record—her fifth studio album, alongside two in-concerts and five EPs since 2009—like none before.
My identification with Elisabeth Corrin Maurus has little to do with her being a fellow Midwesterner and youngest-of-four, sharing my late mom's birthday (55 years apart), or having a middle name one letter removed from my own. Rather, it's because hers is the most engaging, moving, intelligent and varied body of work in pop music today—even more so with her recent release of When I'm Alone: The Piano Retrospective.
Lissie is one of today's most assured—and underrated—rhythm guitarists, rockin’ six strings with the best, but here she sets down her acoustic, the sensitive arrangements and expressive stylings of pianists Jo Dudderidge (seven tracks) and longtime collaborator Martin Craft (four) supplying the instrumentation. The former's style verges on neoclassical; the latter's is sparer—but just a bit; thus, the back-and-forth yields subtle variety. To my mind, the pianist-pair could have visited the lowest, gravest keys a bit more—a minor (no pun intended), subjective judgment, and perhaps suspect coming from this bass player.
The album comprises three songs each from Lissie’s 2018 Castles and 2010 breakthrough Catching A Tiger (her second record, following ‘09s stellar debut-EP Why You Runnin'), plus two from My Wild West (2013), one from Back to Forever (2013) and a pair of covers. The 11 songs aren't arranged chronologically but are “curated” for optimal effect.
With an astounding range from husky low-alto to soaring soprano, Lissie’s been described by a fan-page admirer as “The Queen of Singing.” The title, if not artful, is apt, and throughout When I’m Alone, Ms. Maurus is in especially fine voice. Note: “voice” singular: there are no harmonies, no multi-vox tracking—just judiciously deployed reverb. She long has deftly deployed—to use visual-art/design terminology (her mother being an interior designer)—white spaces and negative shapes, here most dramatically on “Castles” and the bridge of “Everywhere I Go.” Sometimes her vocal, the piano, or both sustain for multiple measures; other times, they recede into long silences before the vocal returns, alone, its effectiveness magnified by the preceding quietude.
A career-long adherent to Louis Sullivan’s edict “Form follows function,” Lissie (plus pianist pair) here ensures that mood, tone and theme on the one hand, and melody / music on the other, echo and bolster one another. The gorgeous “Sleepwalking” starts with a lone, repeating middle-A (the A below middle-C) that repeats throughout the entire song—sometimes solo; sometimes in chords—evoking the stroll of the dazed dreamer “walking these city streets… / Taking my worries and giving them up / To the night.”
Similarly, each stately, stentorian chorus of feminist anthem “Daughters” hammers home a unity call (“Keep that tender heart / All the pain you take, and make a start … In a world that's run on pride and force / Women of the world, we have a voice”)—one that, by the way, implicitly welcomes-in men. Her rootsy scatting (“Ooo, yeah-eah / Whoa, yeah-eah”) is, if ever I’ve heard it, the sound of hard-won, emphatic, exultant freedom.
In the bridge of “Don’t You Give Up on Me,” voice and piano build hand in hand—a musical correlate to the romantic bond the singer desires. In prior full-band and solo-guitar arrangements, this and other rockers end with fist-in-the-air power-chords; here, the piano foregoes punctuation, refusing even—in “Don't You” and elsewhere—to resolve, instead ending on either a single, understated note or a yearning, sustained soft-chord. The longing lack of resolution mirrors the lyrical ambiguity; as we leave her, the singer is still wondering: Will he, or won’t he?
An album highlight is “Love Blows,” Lissie’s indictment of romance as destined to end in heartbreak (see also the J. Geils Band’s “Love Stinks”). (For Lissie, happily, this is a temporary stance; she writes fabulous love songs.) The piano version surpasses Castles’ original, as vocal (complete with sometimes winsome sighs, gasps and speak-singing) and piano alike push and widen the dynamic range. There's a decrescendo on the bridge, to the point where the music nearly fades out—before the duo tears into a through-the-roof last chorus that ends on a long-held vocal sustain. It's a rollercoaster ride—much like love and heartbreak.
In some arrangements, piano builds, nudging though never forcing the vocal to do likewise, while in others, piano softens relative to voice—all depending on the words Lissie is singing and the song's thematic arch.
On this subject of the superb arrangements and—especially on the joyous “Best Days”—dynamics, I’d be remiss were I not to note that the album is lovingly and thoughtfully produced by the aforementioned Craft. (By the way: for best “Best Days” listening, dance to it Lissie-style, i.e. barefoot, while sporting a pair of the song’s namesake white sunglasses.)
A final example of the retrospective album’s singular form/function adherence is the elegantly tormented closer “In Sleep” (sleep being “...the only place I get to see you / Get to love you”). Its beautiful, bittersweet ending closes the album in that same vein.
2011’s Covered Up with Flowers EP comprises several of her oft-performed-live reinventions of works by artists ranging from Joe South to Nick Cave to—with remarkable success, given the source genres—Kid Cudi and Lady Gaga. On When I’m Alone, her reading of the Dixie Chicks’ “Cowboy Take Me Away” shifts the song from fiddle-laden country to stark, spare, so-lonesome-I-could-cry Western piano. There is a distinction between the two letters in “C/W,” and to my ear, Lissie—like her alt-Western colleague / kindred spirit Neko Case—has always been less state-of-the-art Southern studio than stripped-down South Dakota high desert: gritty, unadorned and never overproduced. This “Cowboy...” cover is “Western at its best-ern.”
Fleetwood Mac’s overfamiliar “Dreams” doesn’t merit its status as the album’s longest track. Lissie’s singing is lovely (as is the high-trilling piano intro) but quite similar to Stevie Nicks’ original. (By the way, no matter who is singing: I’m sorry, but thunder does not happen “only when it’s raining.”) I’d have preferred a rendition of Back to Forever’s title track. Lissie, if you’re lissie-ning: Shawn Colvin folds a tribute-chorus of the Jimmy Webb / Glen Campbell classic “Wichita Lineman” into her wonderful “Wichita Skyline”; instead of covering the whole Mac-track, you might drop some “Dreams” into “Sleepwalking” or “In Sleep.”
Lissie’s signature song is, unsurprisingly, a standout: the retrospective’s title track “When I’m Alone,” from Catching a Tiger (on whose 10th-Anniversary Tour the artist was supposed to embark this very month). It simply shines, and the song’s title remains appropriate on this, Lissie’s most close-to-solo studio album. Granted, she’s not quite “alone” here, thanks to Dudderidge’s celestial high-key flourishes, but When I'm Nearly Alone just wouldn’t cut it title-wise. (Something from Dinner—?) This track, “Best Days,” “Don't You Give Up on Me” and “Daughters” show that Lissie remains one of our great sing-along songwriters: when their choruses' contagious enthusiasm hits, try not to join in.
For many, Mariah Carey embodies the high-water mark of pop vocalization. Whereas her stylings, and that of her scores of imitators, rhetorically ask, “Why sing a syllable in just one note, when eight will do?” Lissie more often sustains that syllable into the sunset. In favoring long lines that bring chills rather than encouraging a finger-count, she’s in the esteemed company of three fellow Team-David-Lynch-mates: Julee Cruise, Chris Isaak and Rebekah del Rio. (As it happens, all four have performed on screen for the Twin Peaks auteur, who seems to share my preference for canyon-spanning vocal lines over jumping-bean gymnastics.)
Like most retrospectives, When I’m Alone includes no lyrics booklet—printed lyrics having accompanied these songs' debuts. Accordingly, I’ve focused on other aspects of Lissie’s achievement. But suffice it to say that while the words here, unlike the arrangements and musicianship, aren’t new, they stand head, shoulders and clavicle above the vast majority of what passes these days for pop-music wordsmith-ery.
Last month, when I birthday-gifted my sister Rachel the Catching A Tiger CD, she asked, “What is it about her work that you especially love? Her voice? Her lyrics? Or—?”
“Everything,” I cut in. “There's nothing missie-ing from Lissie.”
That includes the artist’s heartland decency, her—to put it simply—goodness. This is apparent in her work’s uplift; her gracious, genuine stage presence; the fact that this northeast-Iowa resident brings the produce from her 50-acre farm to gigs and gives it to her fans; and her humility. We met pre-concert in Rochester, Minn., on the steps of the lone, restrooms-housing building near the outdoor stage. Eyes wide, I eloquently exclaimed “Oh—uh—hi!” Her unassuming and, needless to say, needless-to-say “I’m Lissie”—delivered with wide, shining grin and welcoming handshake—spoke volumes.
Too, she holds annual Laura's Legacy concerts in memory of her beloved aunt, whose loss to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease) inspired “Sun Keeps Rising” on My Wild West; all Laura's Legacy concert proceeds support the fight against the dread disease. The next such performance —a virtual one, of pandemic necessity—is right around the corner: Sunday, June 14.
Speaking of present Plague Days, one of their bright spots is Lissie's monthly Veeps.com gigs (photo-bombed by her dog Olive) benefiting vital organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the World Health Organization. She certainly has been a crisis-time MVP for Heather and me, not just at our dinner table but, thanks to those amazing concerts, on our widescreen as well.
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Pop (and now classical piano) music as a force for hope and even—from the daughter of a Dr. Maurus—healing? Nothing naïve nor corny about that—nor about our taking Lissie at her word when she reassures:
“The best days of our lives are / Coming for us, waiting to be realized / Keep your eye on on the prize / ‘Cause we’re gonna last forever.”
