The Watson Twins certainly can't claim to lack models for making distinctive Cali-lite country-pop in the 21st century. Chandra and Leigh's voices and surname adorned Jenny Lewis' 2006 album, Rabbit Fur Coat, an intensely individual document of a boho-celeb's passage through adulthood that found its creator wrestling fearlessly with faith, sex, and all the other things that nag at a maturing heart. Lewis' record may not have been musically adventurous, but her self-aware smarts allowed the Rilo Kiley frontwoman to overcome the typically pale strictures of alt-country and produce the best work of her career. Lewis' twin harmonizers tread the same politely restrained sonic path on their debut full-length, Fire Songs. Unfortunately, the Watson Twins don't possess Lewis' lyrical or performative presence, and all too often their words and melodies fail at even the modest task of standing out from such innocuous landscapes. Calling it coffeehouse music would actually be a correct application of an oft-misused pejorative. It's bullshit to label the work of fierce women like Lewis, Kathleen Edwards, and Martha Wainwright thusly, but in the case of the Watson Twins the soft-soled shoe truly fits. Within a certain very unobtrusive framework, Fire Songs is, truth be told, pretty musically solid. "How Am I to Be" kicks things off with a nice Motown-ish vibe, while "Map to Where You Are" is spiced with some nifty Mexican horns. The occasionally rambling, ruminative bent of the album's guitars (particularly on "Dig a Little Deeper" and "Sky Open Up") point to the influences of the Grateful Dead and Neil Young (the girls covered the latter's "Powderfinger" for a charity comp earlier this year). Hardly stretching, sure, but you couldn't accuse Fire Songs of being utterly undifferentiated either. That the Watson Twins blend seamlessly into these backdrops, however, is far from a compliment. Of course it's lovely to an extent when the girls harmonize, but neither owns a voice strong enough to convey much besides a languid aridity. And it's not as though their softly-sung words carry quiet bite either-- mostly these lyrics are either unmemorably nebulous or else ring generically false, like the hard-drinking set-up of "Bar Woman Blues", the image in "Lady Love Me" of "those bruises you still have on your arm" or the gently cooed suggestion on "Old Ways" that "you're always on fire." The noteworthy exception is "Only You", which momentarily dispenses with generalities and presents a genuinely nuanced portrayal of the selfishness inherent in love. Far more emblematic of the Watson Twins' approach is their limp cover of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven", which robs the song of all its giddy desperation, replacing it with something that aims for ache but ends up settling for a mere freeze-dried prettiness. You get the sense they could perform the same service with any source material-- the Ramones, ABBA, Slayer, all rendered sleepily sweet.
Wavelength
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