Watchhouse - Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) - Nightbird

Watchhouse Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) - Nightbird Label Tip Toe Erstveröffentlichung 20.08.2021 Format CD Lieferzeit 1 – 3 Werktage Preis 13,95 € (inkl. MwSt. zzgl. Versand)

Ein neues Mandolin Orange Album, eigentlich ihr sechstes, allerdings unter neuem Namen, und somit das erste. Es sind imm er noch Andrew marlin (Gesang, Mandoline) und Partnerin Emily Frantz (Geige, Gesang), dazu ein paar Freunde, Josh Kaufman, Josh Oliver, Joe Westerlund

Unser Rezensent hat's gehört:
Watchhouse aus North Carolina sind Andrew Marlin und Emily Frantz, also Mandolin Orange, sie haben sich nur umbenannt. Eigentlich deren 6. LP. Frantz übernimmt 2x die Lead-Stimme, ansonsten Harmony Vocals, frühere Bluegrass-Wurzeln sind inzwischen fast völlig verschwunden, viele Songs strahlen so etwas wie ganz dezente positive sanfte Melancholie in friedvoller Atmosphäre aus (sehr angenehm!), über weite Strecken bewegen sie sich irgendwo zwischen (vornehmlich) Indie-Folk-Pop und „Indie Americana“, gelegentlich wird mal Country-Einfluß stärker betont resp. wunderschöner intimer Songwriter-Americana zelebriert. Oder der Sound mutiert gar phasenweise zu etwas rauherem gitarrengetriebenem Rock. Ein relaxter und sehr aparter Flow steht neben dezent lebhafterer Gangart (mit eingebauten Ruheinseln von intimer Direktheit), ziemlich vielfältige federnde Phasen neben losem herrlichem Klangmalen, tiefenentspannte Ruhe und Schönheit (mit Aufwallungen zum Schluß) paaren sich mit süffigeren Momenten, akustische Gitarre (sowie Mandoline und andere Saiten) überwiegen klar die elektrische, Pedal Steel kommt manchmal hinzu, Geige ebenfalls, sporadisch Orgel/Harmonium (?). Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman u.v.a.) produzierte und spielte, färbte möglicherweise auch leicht ab. (detlev von duhn)

Hier was das Carolina-Americana-Duo dazu verbreitet:
By the time 2019 came to its fitful end, Andrew Marlin knew he was tired of touring. He was grateful, of course, for the ascendancy of Mandolin Orange, the duo he’d cofounded in North Carolina with fiddler Emily Frantz exactly a decade earlier. With time, they had become new
flagbearers of the contemporary folk world, sweetly singing soft songs about the hardest parts of our lives, both as people and as a people. Their rise—particularly crowds that grew first to fill small dives, then the Ryman, then amphitheaters the size of Red Rocks humbled Emily and Andrew, who became parents to Ruby late in 2018. They’d made a life of this.

Still, every night, Andrew especially was paid to relive a lifetime of grievances and griefs onstage. After 2019’s Tides of a Teardrop, a tender accounting of his mother’s early death, the process became evermore arduous, even exhausting. What’s more, those tunes—and the band’s
entire catalogue, really—conflicted with the name Mandolin Orange, an early-20s holdover that never quite comported with the music they made. Nightly soundchecks, at least, provided temporary relief, as the band worked through a batch of guarded but hopeful songs written just
after Ruby’s birth. They offered a new way to think about an established act.

Those tunes are now Watchhouse, which would have been Mandolin Orange’s sixth album but is instead their first also under the name Watchhouse, a moniker inspired by Marlin’s place of childhood solace. The name, like the new record itself, represents their reinvention as a band at the regenerative edges of subtly experimental folk-rock. Challenging as they are charming, and an inspired search for personal and political goodness, these nine songs offer welcome lessons about what any of us might become when the night begins to break.

“We’re different people than when we started this band,” Marlin says, reflecting on all these shifts. “We’re setting new intentions, taking control of this thing again.” 

Watchhouse CD Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater 15,95 €

Watchhouse 2-LP Austin City Limits Live...(Smoke Colored Vinyl) 33,95 €