With their name capturing their affection for the musical past and the forgive-and-forget nature of many of the songs, The Bygones is a real delight of a debut and the foundation of a bright future ahead.
The Bygones are a Nashville-based indie folk duo comprising Joshua Lee Turner and Allison Young, the Brooklyn. They have a shared love of musical nostalgia that embraces 40s big bands, musicals, jazz, 60s troubadours and indie. So it’s not surprising then that their debut album is a somewhat variegated affair. Case in point, after a brief instrumental of plucked strings and dots of piano notes, the album spreads its wings with the breezy Laurel Canyon pop of How Do You Waste A Day? that would ostensibly seem like a love song were it not for the refrain “How do you waste a day?/You tell me there isn’t one/Not when I’m wasting away with you” and “Cause I know I could be happier”. Adding pedal steel, Turner takes the lead on the steady walking beat Whatever That Is is an actual love song (“It’s every part of you that makes me keep falling in love/It’s whatever that is/Don’t have to name it ‘cause it changes as we grow/Now look at the both of us”) and those connections that make a relationship work (“It’s the part of you that gets a flush when you know I’m wrong/Like I usually am, close-hearted and cold-minded/You don’t get angry, but you don’t back down/Until you know I’ve heard/Every word, and I grow a little kinder”). There’s more steel, opening up Turner’s rhythmically bubbling and catchily pop I Can’t Quit You, about being unable to walk away even if you know you should (“Chew me up and spit me out/But I know you I know you’re still/Lookin’ for the same taste in your mouth…Fool me once, then fool me twice/But I’m the fool who pays the price/And we both know this won’t be good/Cause I’m not thinkin’ like I should”).
With Josh Gilligan’s bass driving things along, Young takes over for the sassy swing of Stars Turn Cold and another uncertain relationship (“if you’re feeling like you just want out/I wish you’d tell me instead of moping about it… Is there something I’m not seeing honey, Do you still want me like you did”) and stays in the vocal spotlight, Turner the response to her call for the acoustic picked frisky countrified toe tapper Falling In Love With Broken Hearts as two hurts come together to ease the pain (“Dinner plans and movies/Love letters and songs/Last time that I felt like this/Everything turned out wrong/I don’t think that I’m quite ready/I still cry in my car/When certain songs come on the radio… but who are we kidding, no/We can’t play the part/We’re just two people falling in love with broken hearts”).
Vocal leads are swapped for the brief unaccompanied, foot stomp percussion tale of how a thirsty, dusty cowhand comes to face the noose after a bar fight down The Clover Saloon, the far lengthier Glad introducing those jazz influences with David Williford on flute and clarinet mingling with the more 70s pop on Young’s airy song about letting go with good grace (“I’m glad I knew you/For as long as I did…And I think about you still/I think that I always will …And now somebody else is loving you/I am glad they get to know you too”). There’s a jazz flavour to in both the sax and the bass lines carrying the wittily barbed Secondhand Store (“I found the love that I wanted from you/In a trip to the second hand store/And I found a dress that would hug me just right/In a way you hadn’t done before”) although Young’s vocals are more into folk while the rhythm has a Velvets undercurrent.
Turner on vocals, Asteroid Day (a real thing, celebrated in the US on June 30) is framed around shimmering keys and enigmatic lyrics (“Let your carbon constellate/In yellow, blue, and red/When I go throw a masquerade/Then I know how the ash is made/As I become mycelium/A forest floor, a bed”).
Interlude, as it suggests, is an instrumental, one of dreamy cosmic jazz inclinations, before concluding things with the hushed and softly harmonised pizzicato strings The Collector (“If I could hold your kisses/In the palm of my hand/That would be grand/When I’m somewhere without you/I’d have the sweetest way/To cure the blues”) with its sax, French horn and trumpet, and, finally, rounding off with Young and another bittersweet love and loss number in If You Wanted To (“Throughout the years I’ve wondered/If it was a blunder/To put my heart right back on the line/If you really wanted to/Be here you would/If you really wanted to/Love me you could/If you wanted to/But it’s up to you”), the song developing from being initially acoustic picked into a mid-tempo insouciant rolling and tumbling swayalong rhythm.
With their name capturing their affection for the musical past and the forgive-and-forget nature of many of the songs, The Bygones is a real delight of a debut and the foundation of a bright future ahead.
The Bygones – out on 4th April (Tone Tree)