Whitehorse have always made tension sound like a room two people refuse to leave. On All I Want Is All of It, Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland return to early folk-rock romanticism with the mileage of a long musical and marital partnership, recorded with a ragged, farmhouse-studio looseness that lets the floorboards speak up too. The “Then” that helps frame it is The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow, a 2011 touchstone for modern male-female roots duos built on intimacy, friction, and the dangerous sport of singing very close together.
Americana 2011: The Scene
This year, Twangville made it’s first trek to Nashville for the annual Americana Music Conference and the 10th Annual Americana Music Awards. Over the next week I’ll be highlighting some the moments, musical and otherwise, from this year’s event. WHAT’S IN A NAME? The running joke all week was how to define Americana. The context […]
SXSW 2011: The Scene, Part 1
For me, the true harbinger of spring is the arrival of the SXSW Music and Media Conference in Austin, Texas. Or rather, spring begins for me when I arrive in Austin for SXSW. With upwards of 2,000 bands and 13,000 attendees, SXSW is the world’s premiere music conference. Even better, it is one heck of […]
The Civil Wars – Barton Hallow
The benefits of landing a tune on a prime-time drama can obviously be plentiful, and make no mistake, The Civil Wars, a duo out of Nashville have certainly been reaping those riches in the form of monumental buzz and sold out club shows all over the country. Of course, the side of that which isnt […]