Local Folk/Pop band Tupelo Honey releases its new seven-song CD, Sweet, this Saturday at the Southgate House. The release party also features support acts Kelly Thomas and the Fabulous Pickups, Wojo, Pete Dressman and the Soul Unified Nation and Lauren Houston.
Capturing the barebones, lilting essence of Folk music couldn't have been an easy task for two suburban-born, Pop Rock-bred college girls. But Katie Wefer and Heather Turner, whose natural musicality had no plans to sit idly by, started with what they already had going for them — two equally impressive sets of pipes, twin only in their matching emotive power. Then they went from there, adding violin, bongos and a rock-steady rhythm section. The product — as bold and braless as it is shy and simple — became a set of sweepingly organic stingers that rake in the stripped-down seriousness of Indigo Girls, Gillian Welsh’s subtle masculinity and the sheer fun of Country darlings, the Dixie Chicks.
“Ian’s Song” is the undeniable stand-out with loosely staggered, impeccably simple acoustic melodies and the kind of nuanced and empathetic vocal harmonies that, when emitted for the first time, cause two singers to stare in wide-eyed awe at one another, mildly unsettled at the prospect of such a dazzling and effective combined effort. Perfect synchronization doesn’t come without practice, though, as is clear in “Devuelve Mi Corazon,” sung in fluent though clearly secondary Spanish. The track is one of surprisingly few youthful hiccups on a masterfully produced first effort — and any concerns are immediately dispelled by the gorgeous “Believe Me Now,” a heady come-to-Jesus ode that shows much wiser tones with darkly prophetic, Fleetwood Mac-esque violin/vocal pairings.
Soul-soothing Girl-Folk sets common themes of heartache and yearning amidst a backdrop of plucky thumbs-in-her-belt-loops sanity, a formula that abounds in “Leave Me Tonight,” sweetly urging that universal and ubiquitous “him” to “Remember your woman will be just fine.” Indeed.
Listen to "Ian's Song" from Tupelo Honey's Sweet:
— Hannah Roberts
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