Songs like pursuit of happiness
Three tracks carry over untouched from the EP, joining nine new songs she’s been playing live in recent months. Though Lissie has amply proven her interest in music beyond the scope of whatever is considered “folk” these days, Catching a Tiger, her full-length debut, might startle any fans hoping she’d further deliver on the presumed promises of last year’s breakout. No wonder it seemed so deeply odd to hear her hollering “I’m a freak bitch, baby!” a la Stefani Germanotta, at live shows and online video sessions mere months later. Years before, she’d collaborated with a couple of DJs on tracks that did relatively well in the house/electronica world (a Deadmau5 remix of her work with Los Angeles DJ Morgan Page, “The Longest Road,” was nominated for a Grammy), but with “Why You Runnin’,” Lissie emerged as an old-souled, cornsilk-haired daughter of Rock Island, Ill., all heartland-nostalgia and brooding, windswept sorrow. Her basic artistic identity was shaped by her first two EPs, 2007’s largely-unnoticed Lissie and last year’s tremendous “Why You Runnin’.” The first four tracks were sweet, bare and klutzy, but apparently all she needed was a couple of years to scrap it out on the road and Band of Horses’ bassist Bill Reynolds (who produced the newer EP) to lay plenty of reverb into the mix. She could easily get pegged as the big-voiced-white-girl-with-a-guitar-who-does-ironic-covers, but the songs are rendered with such obvious, kitsch-less affection that they complicate the whole idea of her. Lissie Maurus, the singer/songwriter who performs under her first name, owes much of her recent notoriety to her live covers of songs like Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness, which are as notable for their unexpectedly sublime execution as they are for being so removed from the folky milieu she seems to inhabit.
![songs like pursuit of happiness songs like pursuit of happiness](https://i.redd.it/neeaia89ugz71.jpg)
A stellar debut, but not the one you might expect