From the Shelf: Lissie/This is My Suitcase
By: Christian Hagen
Our site has been actively available to the public for exactly 9 months today (look it up!). In that time, our humble yet growing collective of musical dissectors and debaters has received a rather surprising number of album submissions, some of which we’ve covered very positively on this site (Tarlton, Paper Tiger, etc.) and some of which didn’t really connect with us (Untied States, Smokey Robotic, etc.). Some others have collected digital (or sometimes physical) dust in our possessions or been outright disregarded, not necessarily because of a lack of quality, but usually because we simply got too busy to listen to them.
I’ve decided it’s time to give some of these more forgotten releases their due examination, starting with two chosen because one is perhaps the most discussed submission we’ve received, and the other is, arguably, the weirdest.
Lissie, Catching a Tiger
I’ve dragged my heels on this album since it was first sent to us, partially because I got wrapped up in other music around the time it was first submitted, but also because, frankly, I find the music kind of dull. However, enough people have discussed it or asked about it, I feel I should at least say something.
If you listen at all to pop, or even alt-rock, radio, you’ll likely have heard Lissie’s debut single “Why You Runnin’,” an especially catchy sing-and-stomp adult contemporary folk-pop number that’s positively prime for your local ’80s, 90s, and today’ radio show. But where this song contained a fair amount of surprise that is often lacking in her coffee house-folk compatriots, particularly in the sinister-sounding buildup in the second half, the majority of Catching a Tiger is innocuous, at times even a bit grating.
The best moment to illustrate the main flaw with this album is in the opening track, “Record Collector.” What begins as a simple enough singer-songwriter tune suddenly, around the bridge, drops into an neo-gospel build, slowly churning and then accelerating into a wonderful release of noise and energy…and then, after two bars of this exquisite release, it drops back into the original melody, and the momentum and pleasure, that fleeting few seconds that make the listener think they aren’t just listening to 2010’s KT Tunstall or Corinne Bailey Rae or Sheryl Crow, is completely let go, and with it, the expectations of a fresh, new take on the pop singer-songwriter genre are dashed.
From there each song is increasingly devoid of nuance or excitement. Lissie’s voice takes on affectations that dozens of other successful singer-songwriters have been utilizing to greater effect since the 90s, her songs are occasionally hook heavy but ultimately meaningless, and by the end it feels like you really are sitting in a coffee shop, awkwardly clapping for this person and throwing a dollar in her hat so she’ll just go home and let you sip your coffee in peace.
This is My Suitcase, Welcome to Cat Heaven
I’m not sure that This is My Suitcase is the weirdest band I’ve ever reviewed, but they are, at the very least, damn close. What I will say first about the group is that their energy is occasionally refreshing, and mostly infectious. That the opening track on their album contains a chorus of the band members singing “Meow meow meow meow meow” in the background as singer Joe Carmalengo yelps about being happier in the titular Cat Heaven is only the first indication that there are some very odd landmarks throughout this album. But what’s especially confusing about the group is that it’s very difficult to determine if Carmalengo is just having fun with the listener, or if he’s seriously insane. It feels like Carmalengo sings about cats more often than Win Butler sings about kids, and after several references to kitties and their silliness, I had the distinct impression that my brain was being separated from its stem. Worse, I can’t decide if this is a bad thing.
Musically, the group is all over the place, from at times being the definition of pop twee to at times being vaguely punk, though TIMS seem the sort of punks that prefer rainbows to anarchy symbols. This could just be my brain confusing the group’s sound because of Carmalengo’s distinctively pop-punk, Say Anything-esque vocal qualities. On many of these tracks, I find myself thinking “I hate this man’s voice” just a split-second before he does something absolutely outrageous that makes me forget that thought entirely and knocks me totally off guard. The rest of the band is much easier to understand; it’s pop, it’s fun, it’s sunny, and at times it can be quite large. Nothing here is especially complicated, and in many ways that’s quite refreshing.
But not every song is a breath of wild energy, and after a few tracks, you may sink into a brief diabetic coma from the sweetness or, depending on your tolerance for the vocals and snuggly song structures, passing out from a stress headache. And if that doesn’t stop you from listening altogether, “Me and You” probably will. At 5:34, it’s by far the longest track on the album. Worse yet, for a band that clearly has a boundless energy, the song has the fewest musical changes of any, containing just a droning series of chords and Carmalengo’s grating voice rambling over the top. Whatever pleasure one might derive from the outright mania of the rest of this album is completely lost, and the whole production collapses, forced to reinvigorate itself, which the group attempts to do by simply pretending it never happened and returning to the original sound. Needless to say, the attempt is less successful than I think the group was hoping.
In the end, This Is My Suitcase is less “good music” than it is “what the hell am I listening to, are they serious, okay I can stick with this, alright too much I’m out.” Which might be a complicated series of thoughts to assign to any given listener of this album, but, frankly, I can’t see how anyone would think anything else. That said, I would gladly hope to see the group in person, partially because I need to see Carmalengo’s face when he sings about cats and ghosts and cat ghosts and see if there’s a hint of a smile on his face as he belts and yelps, or if he’s seriously, sincerely, the craziest human being in indie-pop.
Meow.