Jeff's Best Albums of 2013: #1: Lissie - Back to Forever

If an artist releases two albums, and they're both your favorite albums of their respective release years, there's a chance that they might be your favorite recording artist, right?

I don't know how I tripped up on Lissie back in 2010 when Catching a Tiger came out, but I know that my wife was really, really tired of hearing a number of the songs over and over again. She put out a covers EP a couple years ago, but it seemingly took forever for the newest album to come out, and it was worth the wait.

The album leads off stronger than her first album and doesn't really stop. "Shameless" is a mid-tempo rocker about fame, "Mountaintop Removal" a solid-but-misguided protest song, "Further Away (Romance Police)" feels like a time warp into the 1980s. So many interesting sounds from start to finish create a really strong, cohesive album from start to finish.

Long and short? Lissie really shouldn't be this good. Her cover versions are excellent, her original songs all memorable and can serve as any type of earworm you need, and it's absolutely the best album I've heard all year long. I hope you love it, too, you can find out and stream it below: