Written
by Larry Robertson, posted by blog admin
The
first full length album from Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Songs for Mixed
Company, is the apex of achievement thus far for the singing and songwriting
tandem of Phil Barry and Sarah Fuerst. Both musical artists have long pedigrees
on the indie scene and bring their combined experiences together in a way
certain to leave more than a few mouths agape. The album’s ten tracks make it
very clear that the duo’s grounding in folk and other Americana music tradition
remains the foundation of everything they do, but the collection seldom stops
there. It ventures relatively far afield with Mellotron touches and often seems
just as content pushing nuanced heartland rock as it does carefully exploring
material on the backs of the acoustic guitar alone. Other instruments like
strings, organ, and accordion make appearances on this release and organist
Mike Lynch, in particular, emerges from these songs as a key for the duo to
fully realize their ambitions.
Things
begin on a hushed note with the track “Let’s Be Friends”. The duo clearly aren’t
attempting to refashion the songwriting wheel, but their take on their
relatively familiar subject, the breakup of a long term connection and ensuing
aftermath, finds them sifting through the rubble with a level of sensitivity
and discernment uncommon to even the finest genre performers. “Miss Me” is the
album’s clearest dive into classic country waters and the duo deliver with a
stylish tearjerker that, while manipulating the listener’s emotions, never
rings false. The song really begins moving during its second half and this
particular configuration plays with such sympathetic tightness that they come
off sounding like a band who’s been playing with one another for years. Phil
Barry takes over the bulk of vocal duties on the song “Can’t Be Trusted” and
makes deadly serious a lyric that might have been a real eye roll in lesser
hands. The shadows cast from the guitar playing lend the lyrics a certain
poetic gravitas they might have otherwise lacked, but Barry’s vocal here is
pitch perfect and inviting despite the subject matter.
“Goodbye
is Not the End” might possess a more playful aura than many of the earlier
songs, but there’s much of the same sense of loss pervading its lyric that we
hear in the album’s more nominally “serious” tracks. “Vesper” is a beautiful
instrumental, unexpected from this duo and particularly so deep into the album,
but it sets up a nice contrast with the next song “Sweetest Baby”. The musical
mood lightens and we’re treated to the juxtaposition between buoyant music and
unhappy lyrical content that helped earlier songs stand out. The penultimate
song, “I’m on Fire”, brings us an unlikely cover from Bruce Springsteen’s
eighties period and the duo wisely makes no attempt to ape the Boss. Instead,
they lower the volume while retaining the same thread of lust tying both
versions again. Songs for Mixed Company
is, for devotees of the genre, the sort of release you’ve been waiting for
guided by artists capable of speak from their own and to our personal pain
within.
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