Breezy California folk pop
The Watson Twins step out from Jenny Lewis’ shadow for debut.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Although their pose mimicked the grown Grady Twins on the cover of Jenny Lewis’ Rabbit Fur Coat, The Watson Twins — identical twins Chandra and Leigh — were the sugary icing on top of the Rilo Kiley frontwoman’s solo debut. The Kentucky duo’s smoky harmonizing was the soul in Lewis’ country soul album, sprinkling tunes such as “Rise Up With Fists” with their graceful background vocals.
On the subsequent tour, the twins’ pristine vocal harmonies were front and center, including accompanying Lewis on an a cappella version of The Shirelles’ “I Met Him on a Sunday.” As Rabbit Fur Coat made the twins famous, the duo self-released Southern Manners, an eight-song EP of indie folk co-produced by Russ Pollard (Sebadoh) and J. Soda (of the twins’ former band Slydell) with contributions from Lewis. Appearances at South by Southwest, in Nylon magazine and the twins’ “Time of My Life” appearing on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy only added fuel to their rocketing indie music profile.
In September 2007, the twins recorded tunes for a proper debut album at Everest Analog Recorders and New Monkey Studios in Los Angeles, with Pollard and Soda once again co-producing. The outcome of the sessions is Fire Songs, 11 analog-recorded folk tunes that seduce and slow dance on the wings of the Watsons’ angelic voices over the course of 44 unhurried minutes.
Good: The twins proudly display their influences on Fire Songs, with their California folk pop tinted with soul, gospel, blues and country. The pair learned to harmonize while singing in their church choir back in the Bluegrass State, and Fire Songs is the fruition of being raised on heavenly hymns. Over downtempo country melodies and lovely pop-flavored hooks, Chandra and Leigh wrap each Fire Songs tune in their soulful, ethereal vocals, gently tucking their voices into the rustic musical landscape.
Songs such as “Dig A Little Deeper,” with its reverberating guitar, and “Old Ways,” with its weeping pedal steel, gently drift with slow-as-molasses rhythms, the twins’ haunting vocals propelling the tender tales of soul searching and wild ways.
“Bar Woman Blues” kicks off with a jazzy electric piano and acoustic guitar opening before mutating into a story of fortune-faded gamblers and underpaid waitresses that takes its cues from the country-flavored tunes of The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street.
But the killer moments on Fire Songs are the album’s opener, “How Am I to Be,” and the twins’ starkly sweet recreation of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.”
Beginning with a simple piano and xylophone repetition, “How Am I To Be” opens with the Watsons’ breathlessly wondering “How I am to be/With all your silly ways now” before launching into a jaunty pop number punctuated with a jabbing guitar riff. The dreamy folk pop is sublime, with slow marching lyrics such as “And in the morning, when the smoke cleared there was life/Your white flag raised up high, come back to my arms honey child,” accentuated by ’60s girl group ooos.
The duo strip “Just Like Heaven” of its swirling keyboards and descending guitar riff, reinventing it as a dusty, lustful hymn of harmonica, dripping guitar notes and minimal drums, as the pair lazily coo “Dancing in the deepest ocean/Twisting in the water/You’re just like a dream.”
Bad: For all its sun-kissed folk pop tunes, Fire Songs is too uneven and fails to maintain a steady cadence with the better tunes far outshining the more pedestrian moments. The sparse instrumentation used in each tune blurs the album’s overall picture, as one shuffling acoustic guitar powered song folds into another shuffling guitar powered song at times on the album. Fire Songs could use a spark, such as the mariachi horns driving “Map To Where You Are,” and less laments such as “Fall.”
And while Chandra and Leigh Watson’s vocals are the album’s strongest quality, even their celestial voices cannot hold up some of the album’s incomplete songwriting such as on “Only You,” where lush cymbal crashes and sparse guitar are the only instrumentation for the song’s first third.
Must haves: “How Am I To Be,” “Just Like Heaven,” “Dig A Little Deeper,” “Bar Woman Blues,” “Old Ways,” “Waves”
Rating (out of five): 3 1/2
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