Until a few days ago, I had not heard of Lissie. I ended up coming upon a contest for free tickets to her Toronto appearance and I thought 'why not.' I won the tickets and I ended up at the Phoienix concert hall last night to see her preform. Lissie's concert was, in short, amazing. As you might have guessed from reading my earlier blog entry on K.T. Tunstall, I have a bit of a weakness for bands with strong female vocalists and Lissie definitely satisfied that.
Lissie is an American singer/electric guitarist from Rock Island who rocks hard. She noted that she was a pool of sweat by the end of the first song (she used a towel between songs to dry out) and it was notable. Every minute of the night, Lissie was dancing or singing or talking to the crowd or switching guitar or taking a drink of water to keep hydrated. Her music live is hard to describe. It jumps, sometimes in the space of one song, from rock to country to punk. I'd call her a sort of cross between Neko Case and Adele who plays a Kid Cudi cover.
Her backing band is astounding as well. Her outfit is a three piece with her playing guitar, with a bassist/drummer and another guitarist. The room shook with the power of their playing. The crowd wildly cheered after every song Lisse played, as well talking through the Abba covering openers. Even those who seemed dragged along by the end were as into it as the rest of the fanatic crowd by the end of Lissie's set. At the end of the night when, in her words, Lissie said she was leaving before coming back again, the crowd wildly chanted her name. One of the best songs was one of her three covers which was of a song that she described as 'muzak', the kind of thing you hear played in gas stations and elevators. She made that song that you usually would ignore, hard rocking and danceable. This is applicable to the rest of her music and image as well. When I first looked her up after winning the tickets, she seemed like a sort of bland, country pop singer amoung many others but when I actually listened to her play I realized that she was so much more. Her music has a huge amount of enjoyability and depth to it. The playing and singing is amazing. She rocks.
(I will add video to this post soon but for now just search Lissie up on Youtube. If she's near you, go see her. You won't regret it. I know I didn't.)
