THE OTHER YEARS The Other Years
8/10 southern duo shine on bucolic, folky debut. By Jason Anderson
HeatHer SummerS and anna Krippenstapel were born three days apart in the same city, Louisville, Kentucky, so it seems natural that they ended up in a band with each other. today, they’ve been singing together for 10 years, and the result is that there’s nothing tentative about their debut album.
the self-titled record is also natural in another sense: for a start, it was recorded in a friend’s cabin just outside Louisville, where the duo convened for three days in may with Daniel martin moore serving as engineer; there’s also the abundance of flora and fauna described in the album’s 10 songs, like the chestnut oak and rhododendron, which merit mentions in the haunting “Chapel On Pine mountain”, or the little starlings threatened by the titular predator in “red-tailed Hawk”. What’s more, Krippenstapel’s non-music career as a certified arborist and agroforestry specialist indisputably lends her a greater degree of woodsy authenticity than Justin timberlake could ever achieve.
The Other Years’ combination of crystalline vocal harmonies, Krippenstapel’s fiddle lines and Summers’ contributions on banjo and guitar signals the duo’s fealty to the appalachian traditions of forebears like the Carter Family and Jean ritchie, as well as the Sacred Heart a cappella singing that’s long been an otherworldly element of american gospel music. Yet for all that, their music does not represent a retreat into an idealised pre-industrial past, or another embrace of the self-consciously oldtimey tropes that can add a musty feel to some americana. Instead, it’s full of pathways that lead back into the present, whether the end point is a shadowy corner or an unexpected vista.
In that respect, The Other Years shares much with the work of many of their friends and peers in Louisville. along with Daniel martin moore’s hushed folk lullabies, the Other Years’ take on traditional modes aligns them with Freakwater and Joan Shelley, which may be unsurprising given Krippenstapel’s long tenure as a violinist for both acts. the duo have another valuable friend and admirer in Will Oldham, who enlisted them as the opening act for Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s fall uS tour.
an affecting showcase for Summers’ high, yearning voice, “red-tailed Hawk” opens the album with a demonstration of the band’s keen understanding of their songs’ needs. Spare but by no means bare, it feels clear, vivid and free of unnecessary adornments. Named after the alaskan town where the song’s narrator finds herself after travelling “as far north as I could care to go”, “talkeetna” achieves an exquisite balance between their harmony vocals, Krippenstapel’s fiddle and lyrics that describe long journeys and a hard-won optimism. “Hope is a choice, love has a voice,” Krippenstapel sings in a voice that recalls Gillian Welch at her most melancholy. “It’s not the leaves or the branches but the whisper inbetween.”
Here and elsewhere, the characters in these songs bear less resemblance to farmers and miners in old sepia photos than to their hardluck descendants in the films of Kelly reichardt, an american director who specialises in stories of people coping with hardships and uncertainties in rural settings. “Sinks Of Gandy” and “Chapel On Pine mountain” could certainly describe places you might find the desperate traveller played by michelle Williams in Wendy & Lucy or the lonely nomad played by Oldham himself in Old Joy.
For all of their inevitable woodsiness too, The Other Years’ songs hardly present that natural world as both threatened and threatening. In “Sinks Of Gandy”, the narrator is prone to lament how “West Virginia swallowed me whole” and feel like she’s falling from an appalachian peak. In “White marble”, a heartbroken figure mars an otherwise perfectly pastoral riverside scene by “tossing tears into the water, where like stones they sank”. and while “Lantern Song” may rate as the album’s liveliest song thanks to its amiable bluegrass trappings and images of paper lanterns at night, it takes a turn with an unsettling suggestion that this ceremony is really a search for someone who went missing in the dark long before.
revelations like that one lend an anxious edge to otherwise serene-sounding songs. the Other Years don’t fall into the same trap as other adherents of tradition who present the old tropes, sounds and stories at a safe remove. the whispers inbetween those leaves and branches have much to say about lives in this moment.