Canadian duo from rural Saskatchewan, second cousins Clayton Linthicum and Kacy Anderson, are releasing their sixth album, Carrying On, their second consecutive effort with Jeff Tweedy producing. Like its predecessor, Sirens, the duo has moved away from the minimalist style of their early records with a fuller band sound. Both Clayton and Kacy sing and play multiple instruments and this time their rhythm section has returning drummer Mike Silverman and new bassist Andy Beisel. The duo has garnered several Canadian awards, including a Juno Award finalist for Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year for Sirens. So, the bar and expectations are high for this one.
Many compare Kacy & Clayton’s sound to Richard and Linda Thompson or Fairport Convention. Those artists as well as Shirley Collins, Davy Graham and The Watersons are key influences yet the due admits to a very wide scope from garage rock and country of the mid ‘60s to these cited specifically for Carrying On – Bobbie Gentry’s Delta Sweete, Hoyt Axton’s My Griffin Is Gone, Cajun fiddle music, and the steel guitar of Ralph Mooney, who played on many of the “Bakersfield sound” records of the ‘50s. Psychedelia is present too. Kacy enjoys telling people that they live 250km form the mental hospital that coined the term “psychedelic”.
The duo grew up in the Wood Mountain Uplands, surrounded by endless prairies in the ‘big sky” country. Their families are descendants of ranchers who’d moved up from South Dakota. The nearest record store was a five-hour drive away. Live music opportunities were hard to come by, simply an odd night at a nearby tavern or a Sunday evening gig at a nursing home. It’s no wonder that they gravitated toward old time folk music as a means of deepening their ancestral connections.
The comparison to the early Thompsons is certainly on the mark, especially when Kacy sings, which is most of the time. Hers is a high, pure, fluid voice that floats and soars above Clayton’s deft guitar fingerpicking. It’s immediately apparent in the opening lament, sung by Kacy and propelled by Clayton’s guitar, “The Forty-Ninth Parallel,” where she regrets not marrying for money, captured well in this verse – “now I’m back in the country/With what little is left of my prime/I got the ranch now I just need a cowboy/On that forty-ninth parallel line.” The title track is about savoring what time we have left but the optimism is merely a crack in otherwise dark lyrics.
”High Holiday” offers piercing guitar and a lead vocal from Clayton about being stranded in the snowy mountains looking futilely for escape by playing music. “In Time of Doubt” has Anderson singing in a quasi-country waltz, bemoaning a breakup and wishing she had as much confidence as the one who spurned her. The resonance of Clayton’s guitar at the end does evoke great Fairport Convention records. Kacy sounds blissful in the love song “Intervention” where some of Clayton’s licks are bluesy while “Mom and Dad’s Waltz” is woefully sad, singing about a poor child being passed from parent to parent to grandparent.
Another melancholy scene is pictured in “Providence Place,’ apparently about dementia per the last verse – ‘We’ve always talked in circles/Conversations never change/I’ve known you for ages/But I can’t recall your name.” Even when the subject matter is bleak, Clayton’s guitar playing gives the tune a badly needed spark. As they did often on their last album, they deliver songs about their local environs as Clayton takes the lead on The South Saskatchewan River,” a tune that mourns the loss of nature to unwanted development. As she does on a few songs, Kacy sings of the fear of encroaching death in “Spare Me One More Year,” featuring one of Clayton’s best ringing, resonating guitar spots. Thankfully they end on a joyous note with “The Sweet Orchestra Sound,” a terrific guitar-driven tune about gathering their friends in a band to celebrate the coming of spring.
Even with the dark lyrics, which at times overshadow some strong poetry, this album is a great listen due to Kacy’s lovely, lilting voice and Clayton’s all-over-the-fretboard guitar playing. And, for all the ballyhoo about moving to a full band sound, the rhythm section support is mostly subtle and Kacy and Clayton rightly assume the duo spotlight, as Tweedy stayed hands off, knowing that Kacy and Clayton had the songs and the chops.
