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 Freakwater's Janet Beveridge Bean (left) Catherine Irwin play the El Mocambo on Saturday night. |
There's something almost indescribably beautiful about the way Freakwater's Catherine Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean sound together.
Irwin's voice is low and earthy, Bean's is sweet and high.
Together they create something greater than the sum of their parts, but they also seem to be constantly on the verge of veering off key, or collapsing entirely. That delicate balance is one of the reasons Freakwater's new album, Thinking Of You, is so irresistible.
"They're not easy harmonies," says Bean over the phone from Chicago last week.
"Certain people really like them, but sometimes they're kind of abrasive, and they're not based on traditional harmonic theory -- just on the nature of Catherine and I singing together without a strong music education background."
Another reason to love Thinking Of You is the songs, mostly by Irwin, which combine traditional country instrumentation and forms with a sensibility that Bean calls "kinda f---ed up."
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Indeed, there's usually a dead body, a shiny knife or some ominous black smoke hiding under Freakwater's sweet fiddles and pedal steel.
Maybe that's why the band is unlikely to be featured on CMT anytime soon.
Then again, Freakwater are not exactly ambitious or highly driven. It's been six years since the longtime friends, who grew up singing together in Louisville, Ky. put out their last album, End Time, but neither of them sees anything unusual about that.
"It wasn't like we didn't do anything for six years," says Irwin. "I guess we played every now and then, and we both had solo records. I just don't think either of us has a really good sense of the passage of time. Everything in my mind seems like a couple of years ago."
"I think it was a matter of inertia more than anything else," says Bean. "People seem to think there was something wrong that is now not wrong. But we never really made records that often, so it's not anything that's peculiar to us. It doesn't feel as if we were gone for a long time; it just seems like the normal course of life."
"I'm not a very fast or prolific writer, obviously," Irwin adds. "I kind of have to have a gun to my head to finish anything. There are always lots of songs that aren't finished, 'cause they don't have to be."
In fact, the pleasure of a followup to End Time might have been postponed even further if Freakwater hadn't made a studio date with some of their labelmates in Califone -- including producer Tim Rutili -- as well as their longtime bassist Dave Gay.
"Yeah, 'cause when you get to that point, you really have to know how a song goes, rather than just playing it in your house and being vague about it," says Irwin. "When there are five people sitting there in the studio, you have to know, or they'll just look at you.
"I think it worked out pretty well. And I'm really glad the record's finished, so we don't have to do anything else for another six years!"
Check out Freakwater at the El Mocambo Saturday.