While I accept this is a yawning gap in my knowledge, it wasn’t until I went to see Charles Esten at Birmingham Town Hall last week that I became aware of a TV show called “Nashville” (I couldn’t understand why half of the packed crowd was wearing t-shirts with it on until I Googled it).
I’ll try and maintain some cool by saying that it proves I’m all about the music, shall I?
And that genuinely works for this too, because the Bowen part of Bowen*Young is Clare Bowen an Australian who has starred in the programme and played with Zac Brown and Vince Gill.
The Young half is Brandon Robert who toured with John Hiatt for a decade as well as collaborating with Emmylou Harris, Colin Linden, and Mikky Ekko.
The pair have played together for 11 years since Young was a late replacement for a no-show, but this is their debut album.
It’s a glorious thing, too. Right from the opener, “Water To Wine”, somewhere between Springsteen and Lucinda Williams, it comes on with plenty of energy.
The use of harmonica it displays is prevalent again on “Hair Of The Dog”, but so are the gorgeous harmonies that so characterise the record.
It is an excellently textured collection of tunes too. “God Forbidden”, is darker, almost claustrophobic, so you feel like you are intruding, but it follows that with some lovely, near folk. “Seven Days” is so gentle that it feels like it’d smash into bits if you touched it. The musicianship is from the top draw.
The title track is sweet, probably the soundtrack to first dances all over the place, if like me though, you don’t have romance in your soul then you might find the more expansive “Aurora”, with its proudly pop-infused melodies more to your taste.
By and large, though, this is a gentle record, deliberately so. “Halo” is a vehicle for Bowen’s beautiful (word well chosen) voice and the longest track on the album “Gets Late Early” begins with the mournful wail of the harmonica and builds from there. You can imagine this on the latest HBO blockbuster (to carry on the TV thing). “No one admits that they’re tired” offers Young, before it explodes, as if to wake him up.
Broadly speaking this is a country record. If it is, then “World Brand New” is the hoedown (as well as making me wish I could whistle for about the millionth time in my life – I really can’t!), and “To The Bone” is back to the raw emotion that has infused most of it. Sparse backing, lush voices. That’s generally the order of the day.
Bowen and Young co-wrote all of these, roping in some of the top talent to help them (as their status befits) but “Us” isn’t a great record because of anything they’ve done in the past or because of anyone else. It works simply because Bowen*Young sound so fantastic together.
Rating 8.5/10
