A twin guitar duo from Broadstairs in Kent, comprising Simone Lincoln, a former opera singer who works as a- music therapist and psychotherapist, and flatpicker maestro Matt Evans, this is their self-released debut album following a couple of EPs.
The first three tracks come from ‘Life Lines’, opening with the lullabying folksy fingerpicked ‘A Song for Life’, written during Covid and a song about nature and what connects us all: “I’m the bushes, I’m the trees/I am the air, I am the breeze /I’m the waking dawn, I’m the right, I am the wrong…I’m the beginning, I’m the end./Those connections that you mend.”
Weaving intricate guitar patters, ‘All The Time That Sails By’ is, as you might guess, about the passage of the years and the relationships that shape you along the way: “Someone’s stepped on up to mould you/What on earth here could go wrong?/In harmony you both now sing along/Well It’s supposed to work that way/It’s as all the prophets say/As the girl you once were fades away”. But also how they can go wrong and become “another boil to lance” and “just another ending” and you have to start again.
A second short of six minutes, the circling fingerpicked waltzer ‘Have A Heart’ follows a similar train of thought as Simone sings: “Look to the bonfire of your life before it gets much colder/Ignite the flames again before you get any older/What exactly is it that you think you are protecting? ‘Cause every heart’s made up of all that you have been collecting”.
Again relationships are formed only to fall away: “Lips can close, defences locked, each barrier is up/I see a glimpse from time to time but time’s not giving up./Might we all have been another if we chose a different way?/Or was it all ordained?/Did we really have a say?” Because, as it says, “Times will change but some things will endure on down the age/ Ways are set, grooves are cut but ruts look much the same/Love can be avoided if you follow to the letter/You tick along with freedom’s grace but you won’t feel any better”/
Moving to the ‘Promises’ EP, they pose the existential question ‘What’s Life Without The Dying?’ a melodic but melancholic number that treats on the sense of things becoming too much (“Darling won’t you find me/A place that I might lose myself/And though I might confuse myself/To find some place to hide”) and while it yearns for a light amid the darkness (“Where stars shine brightly every night/And birds sing in the morning…..would be fine/Just every once a while/Makes everything serene…and makes the waking up less daunting”) ultimately it circles around to thoughts of suicide as the only escape: “Oh load for me now please/A gun that I might shoot myself/Or a bridge that I might climb upon”.
Things are more optimistic with the lightly brushed harmonised and violin shaded pragmatism of ‘Saturday’ where love and connection offer a way out of the darkness (“I still see faces in the dark/Turn the light on and you’re still there…walk long enough, the dirt becomes the sea”.
That’s appropriately followed, harmonica keening, by ‘Life And How To Live It’ though that’s less about offering words of wisdom and more of looking through pessimistic eyes (“I’m sickening for something, but I don’t think I’m ill/Some kind of malaise, for which there’s no pill/Searching my senses and looking for clues to the daylight”), a world where “Some trouble comes quick/Much trouble takes ages/From rubble you build,/A book for the ages/With separate chapters and verses for each acquiescence” and “we stumble like moths to the flame….Of a future Unknown”.
The last from the EP, another with a folksy circular waltzing pattern and again well over five minutes , the rather lovely ‘Family Song’ is about the glue that keeps us together:
My mother stares from the heart and she’s hoping to gift all the gifts that she’s able…
My father He sits on the fence, but he’s hoping to give just as much as he’s able…My sisters, they run towards home, trying to keep it afloat/Though the lights start to dim they won’t give up the ghost/My sisters catch any and all winds and ride them as long as they’re able/If it wasn’t for them we would sink like a stone…My brothers/They hold it all close./Placing most of their cards on the table/Their laughter diffuses the passage of time”.
The remaining three numbers are all new, the first, fading gradually in. being the trad-folk infused ‘The House Always Wins’ but which, despite the resigned pessimism implicit in the title, is actually of a more upbeat outlook as they sing “Let us now think of beginnings/ Let us not think of the past/ If the future’s so bright/ Then maybe we might tie one or two flags to the mast”, offering the wisdom that “The further you go to the distance/The further you see through the trees”. Until, that is, the titular conclusion that trying to change the status quo is futile.
However, clocking in at six and a half minutes, the title track, where Sandy Denny comparisons sound strongest, rings more positive notes with the opening lines “let’s get a move on, let’s make a start/With lungs full to bursting and love in our hearts./Let’s grasp contradictions, let’s stray from the lines/The further you get, the easier you’ll find it”. It continues on that same upbeat path as Simone declares “This time I’ll be coming up smelling of roses/With a smile on my face, no stress no neurosis…Well it doesn’t much matter if you are with me”.
That sunshine dims though on the closing ‘Forever To Be Young’ which, featuring flugelhorn and tenor horn, is about the inevitability of time being stolen away and growing old where the days roll on, packing away daydreams and hopes until, in a chilling finale, “the men with the white coats appear at the door”.
Given, as their photos show, neither are in the first flush of youth, it’s not too surprising that, while hope can shine (that is, after all, a lighthouse on the back cover), there’s a prevalent melancholic preoccupation with time passing and the dimming of the days. But, as this rather fine debut shows, there’s still much to serenade the dying of the light..