Carving Canyons

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The album’s context – the loneliness at the center of the pandemic – feels almost behind the times (partly because of the surfeit of covid-based releases over the past few years). So I’ve had this sort of pain of letting go of a lot of relationships that didn’t work out, in particular, but not just specific to relationships, just any kind of grief in life. Carving Canyons is as deeply felt as Lissie’s music has ever been, with sumptuous production and indelible melodies that will surely stand the test of time. Lissie was “broken open,” to borrow the words she sings on the title track, and she spent time grieving, healing, and strengthening her relationships with friends.

She was trying to grow flowers in her farm, where she was stuck as the rest of the world, and flowers in her soul, to which she was trying so much to connect with. And not even on purpose, but there was just a ton of women who I wrote with on this record, and I did find there was something much more somehow efficient about that, whether that’s a coincidence or not. Lead single “Flowers,” written with Bre Kennedy, is a gentle slice of Southern rock that acknowledges the need to feel – “It’s allowed to hurt/I’m allowed to burn/I’m allowed to wonder what you’re doing now” – while hinting at a brighter future – “I can grow my own flowers. Sad,” co-written with rising star Madi Diaz, pulses with resentment and carries an understandable amount of spite with it – “And when you hear this song/I want you to feel sad/Like when you dropped that bomb/Want it to feel like that.Again, it’s very universal, so she was probably able to tap into some of her own life experience of break-ups and people who maybe have hurt you who never had to really answer for it, and how that fits as time goes by.

If you encounter these issues with our vinyl, we will send replacements when appropriate and if copies of the records are still available. Pain is just a river falling past me”: Carving Canyons explores the ways in which our own emotional experiences are forming new topographical textures to explore. So I think as a musician, what I really hope, even aside from how the critics respond, or the industry, it’s more important to me, I think, that the people who get this music can then use it and apply it to their own experiences and heartaches and process, because I think that’s just such a gift.But once I started writing in November, it was like I had some time to reflect on these stages of grief I found myself in. L: When the pandemic started, I was actually living with my ex-partner, who was a farmer, like an actual organic farmer. It’s a credit to Lissie’s vocal skill that she can make the lines “Hope you feel sad, hope you feel bad / I hope you’re sad” effective. She showed once again that great music is able to make the listeners get lost and then find themselves again.

Over the past decade or so, Lissie has made a name for herself as one of the hottest talents on the alternative scene, with her unique blend of rock, folk, country and pop. Such attempts at genre-defining are often pointless other than for marketing purposes, but in this case, the danger of such tropes is that they threaten to disguise that Lissie is, in fact, a bona fide telecaster-toting, tequila-swigging rockstar. As I grieved – not only for a relationship, but for the world in the midst of a pandemic – I felt like my anger made people uncomfortable, but I came out the other side empowered and ready to step back into my light. In most cases we do not send full replacements for these types of issues, unless the damage is severe.

Unlock the chains is about accepting change: change in the world, in the state of things, within oneself. After telling herself that she is free to feel whatever at any moment, the singer opens up about feeling sad again, asking herself more questions, trying again to find the tipping point, the big mistake, why it didn’t work out.

So aside from some one-offs in the last couple years and some socially distanced things I did during COVID, this is my first time really, ‘OK, we’re goin’ on tour. Unravel” picks at the frayed edges of what’s left – “The last time we spoke/I was halfway to California/I was still wearing all of your clothes” – with sorrow welling up in soaring vocals and discordant notes. Never have I heard an album so easily able to shake me to my core, and yet so deeply cathartic and powerfully uplifting. Just when I feel there isn’t anything new to say about Lissie, she releases an album like Carving Canyons.With those experiences in mind and continued self-reflection, Lissie can pursue a way forward over the album’s final three songs. It’s the longest song of the album and it is both a reflection on the past and a hope for the future. I’d plant radish seeds, and maybe five of them would pop up in the same little spot, and four of them would have to go, and I was, “Oh my god, which one can stay, and which one has to go? These cosmetic issues include: seam splits on either the jackets or inner sleeves, dinged or bent corners, and other slight imperfections on the packaging and colored vinyl.