Lissie - When I'm Alone: The Piano Retrospective - Music CD

"When you take a song out of it's production and strip it down to it's basic elements, you get the heart of the song," says Lissie, a sentiment which embodies her new album When I'm Alone: The Piano Retrospective. A re-imagining of her best-loved and career-defining tunes, it unclothes the songs down to their most intimate and vulnerable selves, letting her pristine voice and songwriting shine. "You find out whether [a song] can stand on it's own, whether it's a good song," she continues. "When they come down to their basic bones, are these really meaningful pieces that stand on their own?" The transformation of breakthrough single "When I'm Alone" (from her 2010 debut Catching a Tiger) - the first single to be released from this album - boils down the soaring pop single to a tense and emotive song that aches with heartbreak. When she sings, "When I reach out and I only grab air / And it kills me to think that you never did care", her immediately identifiable velvet-lined vocals take center stage and pull at the heartstrings.