Lean in to Watchhouse’s album, Blindfaller, and it’s bound to happen. You’ll suddenly pick up on the power and devastation lurking in its quietude, the doom hiding beneath its unvarnished beauty. You’ll hear the way it magnifies the intimacy at the heart of the North Carolina duo’s music, as if they created their own musical language as they recorded it. “We talked about the feel of each song and pointed out loosely who was going to be taking solos, but it was mostly a lot of fresh takes, a lot of eye contact, and a lot of nods and weird winks,” says Andrew Marlin, who anchors the band with fellow multi-instrumentalist and singer Emily Frantz. As the duo’s songwriter, Marlin sharpens his lyrical prowess here, touching on broad themes of growing older and feeling helpless in a world torn by injustice. Sure, the album sounds classic, but it is rooted in the here and now of our daily headlines.
The two popular American songwriters Todd Thibaud and Kim Taylor have come together for a joint project, which they have named WATER AND SAND, to describe subtleties of sensitive relationships and the constant timeless movements. Hey Love is their third album, following 2016's self-titled debut and 2019's Catching Light, and they are again backed by Sean Staples on mandolin and Thomas Juliano on electric guitar. Todd Thibaud is one of those reliable guys who has always stayed true to himself musically. Major changes are not his thing, the variety lies in the nuances of arrangement and production, excitement is guaranteed by a high quality of the songs, with his attractive, soulful, creamy-rough voice he sprays a familiar feel-good atmosphere like no other! This was already the case in the days of his first band, the Courage Brothers, in the early to mid 90s. With the 97 solo debut Favorite Waste Of Time, the man from Vermont set himself a first monument on the songwriter / pop firmament. Kim Taylor is a Cincinnati native who has toured extensively with artists such as Canadian Ron Sexsmith and her friends in Over The Rhine, as well as opening for Kris Kristofferson. Her songs have been featured in Her songs have been featured in numerous US TV shows such as Flashpoint, Army Wives, Smallville, Cyberbully, One Tree Hill as well as most recently in the comedy-drama from the UK, Stella. In 2013, she made her acting debut in the independent film I Used To Be Darker, in which she plays a mother who is a musician and who has to build a new life after a divorce.