LISA MICHELLE ANDERSON, Get to Somewhere

There are so many magnificent entry points into Lisa Michelle Anderson’s the Americana/folk/rock aesthetic and lyrical worldview, it’s hard to know how to begin adding up the splendors. So let’s begin with the well-traveled troubadour’s soothing, ethereal voice – a tone so full of gossamer, angelic grace that even the most grounded small-town narrative and colorful detail she weaves on her highly anticipated full-length debut Get To Somewhere seems to come from rarefied air, divinely ordained to leave us breathless.

The album’s title makes perfect sense in light of Lisa’s peripatetic personal journey – born in rural Kansas, with formative years in Iran, Greece and Australia, where at 16, inspired by American singer/songwriter icons Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, she picked up a guitar for the first time. Back in the states, she’s developed her career living and playing in Branson, San Diego and currently, the rural Massachusetts Berkshires.

But let’s focus back on Joni for a sec. One of Lisa’s first singles, earlier in the 2020s, was a dazzling, spot on spin on “Court and Spark,” in which she used the lower tones of her voice. She complements that – and adds her own take on the Joni experience - quite majestically with the jangly mid-tempo pop-rocker “Goin’ Where Joni Went,” a jangling pop-country rocker chronicling the carefree joys of a nighttime camping trip to the beach.

For someone who’s lived so many places and traveled so extensively, Lisa’s fascination with simple, freewheeling small town quirks and pleasures – whether told/sung first person or as a third person narrative - lets us know where her truest heart is. We can’t be sure, let’s say, on the fuzz rock Americana opening romp “Nickel and Dime,” if that roller rink she and her friends are trying to get to (after hanging out at the mall or partying in the local woods) is a memory of her rural upbringing, but her authentic delivery makes it seem so.

Maybe it’s ‘cause there’s nothing much for restless teenagers to do in such places, but truly the most mesmerizing tale, told poetically via the acoustic folk simplicity of “Flags and Flowers,” is the one where and her friend (the daughter of funeral parlor owners) invite their friends (and by extension, us!) to tag along as they look at the engravings and trinkets left on gravestones at the local cemetery.

Lisa’s also got some cool insights on nostalgic romance via the joyful wistfulness of “Polaroid Summer” and the dreamy romance between a diner worker and a sexy customer (“Fell Into Love”).

Considering that ambitious kids always dream of breaking free from the mundanity of their rural upbringing, it’s not surprising that Lisa titles the album after the edgy power ballad “Get to Somewhere,” whose heroine “wanted to drive somewhere/Anywhere but there.” It’s also enlightening to see that she’s not above life’s heavy spiritual struggles on “Devil on my Back,” the cleverly written, most traditional country song on the set – which really should launch its own genre which we can affectionately call “ethereal country.”