The Honey Dewdrops
Album: Tangled Country
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.thehoneydewdrops.com

Purest Americana from Virginia natives Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish, collectively known as The Honey Dewdrops, with a bunch of original songs gathered together to form Tangled Country, the duo's fourth CD release. I'm getting weary of repeating the comment "hey, why've I never come across these guys before?" - but it applies to The Honey Dewdrops too!

OK, I really can't avoid making the inevitable observation that, for a good half of this record at least, what Laura and Kagey remind me of more than anything else is the Gillian Welch/David Rawlings partnership, well maybe at times (Hold Love) verging on the dead-ringer category (no bad thing!), sometimes with an even more painful sense of underlying emotional depth and other times a touch more optimistic (again, no bad thing!). Either way, the duo's narratives - generally revolving around the theme of steering a course through life's "tangled country" - invariably resonate with a simple power that's time-stopping and attention-grabbing in the most humanly communicative manner. Their interpersonal empathy is both very striking indeed and self-evidently genuine, and their flair for closely supporting each other instrumentally too is considerable - Laura turning to banjo or harmonica and Kagey to mandolin when needed - not that this listener's in any danger of getting tired with the wonderful twin-guitar traceries of tracks like Hold Love and Loneliest Songs.

The more philosophical air of Guitars demands a different musical approach, and the reflectively bluesy setting and leisurely tempo suit the lyric well as it ruminates on the very nature of songwriting and the legacy of songwriters - another standout track for sure, along with Lowlands and the delicate Horses earlier on the disc. Yeah OK, sometimes there's a smidgen of additional musical help from the disc's producer Nicholas Sjostrom (bass, piano, Wurlitzer), Dave Hadley (pedal steel) and E.J. Shaull-Thompson (drums), but for the most part it's just those trademark interleaving guitar parts and vocal harmonies to die for (tho' the excellence of the individual vocal work too can't be stressed enough - Laura's in particular IMHO).

Tangled Country is a seriously beautiful and haunting, entirely engaging and commendably honest record that really can't put a foot wrong, so I'll just keep my own feet firmly fixed down on that backporch and play the whole disc over again.

David Kidman