My Open House Festival experience 2010 kicked off with the wonderful Lissie at Black Box, supported by Belfast locals Napoleon. You’ll notice that the Napoleon link points to their YouTube channel – a Twitter page aside, this is their only online offering, so listen well. The guys put on an energetic and confident performance that did exactly what you’d like every support act to do – warmed up the crowd and sparked a very real interest in the music. As always, Open House is extremely successful at pulling together lineups that work well together, and this one was no exception.

Lissie exploded onto the stage at the polite time of 9:45pm and sailed through perfect renditions of ‘Little Lovin”, ‘When I’m Alone’ and ‘Catching A Tiger’, interacting with the audience like they were guests in her living room. Delivering an incredibly genuine and humble performance, Lissie has that amazing ability to both better her recordings live, and give the appearance of being happy to be on stage performing.

Real crowd pleasers included ‘Cuckoo’ and ‘The Record Collector’ – the latter inspiring a passionate story about what evoked Lissie to write it six years ago. ‘Everywhere I Go’ showed an altogether more emotional layer to Lissie’s songwriting and performance ability, and easily captured the audience in four minutes of a different mood to the rest of her set. Lissie has been fortunate in having a strong and talented live band behind her, all of whom seem to be as openly passionate about her music as she is.

Lissie is a talented musician and a passionate performer, which is something you don’t always expect from a major label signing who rises to prominence so quickly. This is one lady who really deserves the success she’s been given, and who really packs a punch in all the right areas.

A great introduction to Open House 2010; more to follow…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgZTLnqBukk