The Sandwitches have many ways to sing about devotion. On their 2009 debut, How to Make Ambient Sadcake, principal songwriters Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper embraced boyfriends covered in blood and commanded cheating lovers to keep their mistresses out of sight. They played songs titled "Marry Me" and "Kiss Your Feet". They delivered these songs with major-key stroll and minor-key tempest, side-stepping the garage-rock of their San Francisco peers (which include the Fresh & Onlys, a band for which Cooper and Alexander sang backup) for a sound that splits the difference between rockabilly and first-wave country & western. The 1950s jaunt of Ambient Sadcake and the ethereal, lovelorn bent of last year's Duck Duck Goose EP provided a rich, promising template upon which to build.
Their second LP, Mrs. Jones' Cookies, starts out with a high-pitched call and an antiquated chord, and the lyrics on opener "In the Garden" find the singer holding a locket tightly against her chest. Eerie and stormy, the song conveys the sort of darkness emphasized in Ambient Sadcake standouts "The Revisionists" and "Stranger's Shadow". But as with their debut, the album has levity to balance things out. Using bright, sprightly chords, "Summer of Love" accentuates the twang in Alexander and Cooper's voices, while "Lightfoot" goes for an almost-dainty folk vibrato reminiscent of Anne Briggs. Early album standout "My Heart Does Swell" provides a little country shuffle to go with the heartsick vocals and a toy piano solo(!). And then "Miracle Me" splinters into the realm of unfiltered sadness, a glacial country ballad highlighted by forlorn vocals and a stately flute solo. Up until this point, the Sandwitches has only hinted that they had the skill to craft such effortlessly beautiful songs.
But this is not to say that they've neglected their ability to write turbulent, overcast rock, either. "Black Rider" shows a nuanced sense of dynamics, calmly ambling about and then building toward a proper climax with rising levels of aggression. A similar method yields even better results on "Over the Moon", where a descending, countrified guitar line eventually gives way to climactic, violent catharsis, all cracking voices and combatively played instruments.
The album's few low points come when those builds don't quite reach fruition. "Heaviest Head in the West" starts out as a slow-burning rockabilly tune, complete with the band's two singers caterwauling desperately while striking their guitars, which is brought down to a simmer. But an inexplicable tempo change eventually peters out with no forward moment, which is disappointing, considering how promisingly it starts out.
"Joe Says" serves as the album's highlight, providing an appropriately dramatic background for Cooper and Alexander's most yearning vocals. The theme of commitment pops up repeatedly during the tune, painting the image of a young woman pacing around her empty kitchen, trying to figure out the whereabouts of her man who "says impossibly good things."
By the end of "Joe Says", Alexander and Cooper are singing the beautifully sad refrain, "He's coming back to me," and it sounds more like the protagonist trying to convince herself. It's the kind of arresting song that would have been perfect as the closer for Mrs. Jones' Cookies. But even with the minor sequencing miscue, the record goes a long way in capturing the promise of a band who gets a lot of mileage out of archaic musical and lyrical themes, a band that makes the primordial seem fresh.
