The Staves
★★★★ Good Woman ATLANTIC.
CD/DL/LP
Strong showing from Watford’s singing sisters after six years. BIRTH, BEREAVEMENT, breakups: since the release of The Staves’ last full album, 2015’s Justin Vernon-produced If I Was, Emily, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor have experienced significant tumult. The sisters have turned that pain and drama into this elegantly nuanced third album, their subtle, sea-glassy voices (Jessica sang on Leonard Cohen’s posthumous Thanks For The
Dance) able to reflect the sunshine melancholy of Best Friend or the clouded tension of Devotion with equal clarity. There’s a welli-ntegrated desire to push at the edges of their folk-pop form, too. Trying’s glint of Bon Iver or The Flaming Lips crunch on Careful, Kid neither overspills their songs, nor obliterates them. It’s the Fleetwood Mac drive of the title track that stands as the album’s defining, defying statement, however; a demand to be heard on their own terms.