The Gossamer Strings – Due To The Darkness
Self Released – Out Now
It’s been a good year for debut male/female duo albums, the latest coming from Kyle McGonegle and Liat Lis of Eugene, Oregon, he on guitar, mandolin and bass, she on banjo, guitar and lead vocals. There are three traditionals included, the first up being bluegrass tune Going To The West while towards the end of the album comes two more banjo-led numbers, Sandy Boys and the duetted closer, Train On The Island. The remaining eight songs are all self-penned but come with the same old-time feel, kicking off with the simply strummed slow sad swayer She Can’t Hear Her Heart before heading into the uptempo bluegrassy title track, the inspiration coming from a sign they saw while shared hiking at Effigy Mounds National Park in Iowa which read “Go no further past 5:30 pm due to darkness”, but also the harsh Badlands of South Dakota (“Battered and beaten and burning. I wouldn’t last a day on my own”) serving as an image of the darkness we have to navigate and the beauty it can sometimes contain.
There’s a campfire waltz air to incipient break-up song Following Through (“You know I’ll be fine if you leave me again/For with you I began and with you I’m sure to end”), followed by another musically frisky leaving number Wonder Why before looking to head home for some emotional heat to warm the winter months in the banjo burbling No Fire.
Guitar and mandolin provide the backbone for Try Your Hand, another song encouraging the rekindling of a spark before the originals close up with the Everything Breaks duet, an unaccompanied intro giving way to a sprightly shuffling fingerpicked rhythm, and the intricate twin-guitar fingerwork of the instrumental Big Sky. Gossamer can sometimes mean flimsy, but there’s nothing insubstantial about what they do here… a rewarding album from start to finish.
https://www.gossamerstrings.com/
You can hear them on our Folk Show: Episode 64 here.