Twilight

The husband and wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks are, one suspects, not taken too seriously in some quarters, dismissed as oddball Americans who flirt with backwoods gothic country stylings, but who lack the authenticity of some of their more lauded contemporaries. But Twilight, their fifth album, shows how far they’ve come with their cottage industry home recordings and their identifiable sound.

There is a link to traditional country music styling on songs like ‘Gravity’, ‘So Long’ and ‘Cold, Cold, Cold’ as well as in more contemporary directions, like on the Casio written opener ‘The Snow White Diner’. They also cover a wide emotional range, from the deep sadness of emotional loss on ‘Passenger Pigeons’ to the more uplifting and hopeful ‘Birds You Cannot See’.

All of which has them pegged as Americana or alt country, which is OK but only gives a part of the overall picture. The fact is you would be hard pressed to come up with anyone else who is making music quite the way they do.