The Lovell Sisters – Time To Grow
2DefPigs Records 2009
Listen while reading:
Paulita Maxwell (from Time To Grow)
Distance (from Time To Grow)
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The Lovell Sisters from Calhoun/Georgia (a real three sisters trio) – I wasn’t aware of them until I saw their performance over at Music Fog (watch it here). They played In My Time Of Dyin from the new album Time To Grow and I thought their music was special in some way. I watched the video a couple of times and I was proofed right – their music is just awesome and I had to get the album.
The trio was formed by Jessica, Megan and Rebecca Lovell back in 2003 and each of them is playing a different string instrument: Rebecca mandolin, Megan dobro and Jessica fiddle – a great combination if you’d ask me. Altogehter they play a mix of acoustic country folk pop and acoustic instrumental folk with insular meanderings to the Irish roots part of American folk music (they call the whole thing progressive acoustic). The best example for this is Ichetucknee Chutney and for me this is, with all respect to the other tracks, the best song on the whole album (reminding me of the Irish traditional Three Young Ladies Drinking Whiskey Before Breakfast). Incredible feeling and drive at the same time. But for it is not a representative for the album at all I won’t add this track to the post because I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about Time To Grow (but you can listen to it over at their MySpace site). Anyhow you can also hear the Irish influences at the end of the title track Time To Grow – it’s a pitty it fades out so soon after the melodie comes in.
Maybe you fear that the music got a bit too much pop appeal for a regular folk album – but let me say so, this is what I really like about it. Their speciality is simply the abiliy to create pop songs you can listen to without having the feeling of beeing mucked all the time. They really know what they are doing and therefore their music is full of passion and love. You can listen to ballads like The Subway Song or to more aroused pop songs like Take One Moment – they are all just great especially in combination with the instrumentals completing this superb album.
Even though I don’t listen to such music too much I think this is another musical higlight at the end of the year. I listened to the album eight times or so and it is not getting boring at all. Indeed it is growing and growing because the arrangements of the tracks are so clever and catchy at the same time. If you got just a little bit of love for acoustic country and folk influenced music in you I highly recommend to give a good listen to Time To Grow – it will be worth every minute of it.
You can pick up a copy of the album at their internet store or you download it via iTunes. Visit The Lovell Sister’s MySpace and official homepage as well.
