After my intense love for Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone last year, I’m all for women with lovely voices singing with a little attitude around sparse pop arrangements. Not that Lissie is a copy of Case, but the two are definitely playing on the same field. It’s a genre that can handle multiple artists, and even though Case is a great one, there’s no one artist out there who blazed the trails and did everything the right way. It’s easy for a girl to pick up a guitar and write a few art-folk songs, but Lissie does everything right, pulling ahead of the pack and putting out a ridiculously strong full-length debut.

Lissie has a basic set-up behind her acoustic guitar, which enables her a lot of free space to unleash her awesome voice. What stands out the most about the music itself is a wispy synth that caresses Lissie’s voice, providing just enough atmosphere to keep the sound stripped-down, but also giving distinction to the remaining aural space. She favors songs with more drive than some of the ballads Case likes to mess around with. Basic arrangements and a powerful voice could be a hundred of different female singer-songwriters, but what makes Lissie stand out are her anthemic melodies. Catching a Tiger is simply brimming with hooks. They’re awesome to sing-along to, but don’t mistake Lissie for bubblegum; she’s just damn good. To describe the first two songs, “Record Collector” and “When I’m Alone” would sound redundant, but Lissie sells them both as originals, and special ones at that. Take the elements I described above and imagine both songs being really great, and you would have “Record Collector” and “When I’m Alone.” “In Sleep” lets the music venture out a little more, adding in more freedoms for guitar soloing. It doesn't have the impact of the first two, and it’s a questionable lead single choice, but it’s still a good song.

“Bully” trots out the first piano ballad—expected, but also surprisingly good. With an earnest melody and a strong release in the middle of the song, “Bully” nails it. “Little Lovin’” is the first distinctly folk song on the album, but Lissie makes the proper adjustments for her vocals and does the song justice with her outstanding vocal performance. The next two songs plod along nicely, but without much that truly stands out, until “Cuckoo” becomes the first slipped cog on the album. This song has radio single all over it, but it goes against what makes Lissie so good. The music, including that synth, all sounds like the rest of the album but she lets her vocals take a back seat. It’s like Lissie flips a switch once that radio song is out of the way, and gets back to business on “Everywhere I Go,” an acoustic-picked ballad, with a once again purposeful melody.

By this point, one might start to become a little antsy. “Cuckoo” missed in a big way, and although there are some very good songs around it, none of them have been truly great since the first of the record. Then “Look Away” comes on, and it’s just too good. It’s a crystallized ballad with probably the best melody I’ve heard all year. “Oh Mississippi” returns to the piano ballad which sounds a lot better when it follows “Look Away.” There’s no doubt that this record enters ‘great’ territory solely because Lisse was behind the mic, and that this wasn’t a producer’s parlor trick or anything innovative from the instruments. Lissie totally owns everything for nearly an hour and it will be something to reckon with when everyone looks back on 2010.

Track List:
1. Record Collector
2. When I’m Alone
3. In Sleep
4. Bully
5. Little Lovin’
6. Stranger
7. Loosen the Knot
8. Cuckoo
9. Everywhere I Go
10. Worried About
11. Look Away
12. Oh Mississippi

iTunes Bonus Tracks:
13. Needle Starts to Fall
14. This Much I Know