Why You Runnin' - EP

Album Review

On her 2007 debut, Lissie’s songwriting sometimes struggled to keep up with her voice. The two share more equal footing throughout Why You Runnin’, a five-song EP that mixes Americana, folk, and Southern balladry into swirling patterns. Recorded in her adopted hometown of Ojai, CA — one of the few places in the world to have a “pink moment” at sunset, where rose-colored light splashes across the Topatopa Mountains — the songs are indebted to the stunning geography that inspired them, and Lissie uses her vocals to conjure up landscapes of rivers, prairieland, and heartache. She’s a fantastic singer, blessed with enough power to rival a pop vocalist but more aligned with folk sirens like Neko Case and Patty Griffin. On “Wedding Bells,” she tweaks an old Hank Williams song by adding minor chords, handclaps, and thickly stacked harmonies, while the piano ballad “Oh Mississippi” (produced by Ed Harcourt, no stranger to piano ballads himself) finds her serenading the river that bordered her childhood home. Why You Runnin’ may only be an EP — one can only hope Lissie has enough slow-smoked melody in her arsenal to sustain an entire album — but it's one of 2009’s finest folk releases regardless.