Album review: Lissie, Back to forever (Columbia/Sony)

If her record company’s blanket-bombing advertising campaign hasn’t put you off by now, you may want to know if Lissie’s second album can measure up to 2010’s brilliant and criminally underrated Catching a Tiger.

Yes and no. Lissie is still a head-and-shoulders-above-the-rest singer and songwriter but where Catching a Tiger mined the 1970s Fleetwood Mac seam, Back to Forever moves things into the 1980s – all fist-pumping verses and “Kids-in-America”-like big choruses.

With the success of a certain three-piece from California, perhaps it was time for Lissie to move on (ahead of the Haim?). And though the hipsters will never take Lissie to their hearts, their loss is the gain of those who care more for substance than style.