The Lostines are a New Orleans duo comprising songwriters Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler and Camille Wind Weatherford; their long-awaited debut album is something of retro pop confection that resonates with country twang guitar, doo-wop and 60s girl group echoes. Alongside a core band that includes Sam Doores of The Deslondes (who also co-produced the album with The Lostines), Ross Farbe (Videoage), Howe Pearson and Gina Leslie, a long list of guest musicians and friends feature across several tracks, including Skyway Man, Joel Savoy, Kelli Jones, Sam Gelband, Peter and Thomas Bowling, Jordan Odom, John James, Sam Hollier and Casey McAllister.
Travelling back to the 60s, they open on a break-up number, A Tear (“Wish you would have shared your heart when he was loving you/Then you wouldn’t be alone and feeling so blue/Oh a tear, a tear is rolling down your cheek/Lonely nights are all that’s left for me/‘Cause I had to say goodbye to your brown eyes”).
They stay in the time capsule for the retro-sounding synths and percussive clops of Full Moon Night, an echoingly sung dreamy ballad that, the instrumentation building as it goes, again turns on a theme of the loss of a past relationship (“Take me back in time to when you were mine/All the days were long and everything felt right/Wanna see you move in the silver light/Wanna see your body over mine/Full moon night like tonight/Make me feel young again”).
There are more regrets in the slightly more uptempo lounge pop Neon Lights (“I should have married you in Vegas in the neon lights/In the haze of dawn when our love was young/Married you in Vegas in the morning sun/Oh, how do I get you back there again”), the pace picking up with After Party which, with pedal steel and K.C. Jones and Joel Savoy’s cajun fiddles, takes a midnight walk along the levee to catch a kiss before the sun means paths must part. Indeed, this rarely departs from songs of love lost or desired, churchy organ setting the tone for the retro waltzing country soul Come Back To My Arms (“It’s been a year now since I felt you fall away Oh, I can hardly watch a sunset/‘Cause it means another day/Since you left me alone I can hardly go on”), Playing The Fool touching on vintage Lesley Gore, while the close harmony Southwest Texas, again with twin fiddles, flies with heavenly harmonies and vintage doo-wop wings.
Heading into the last lap, No Mama Blues is an organ-backed, saloon piano-loping country ballad about being reluctantly abandoned (“Oh my mama how she loved me/But had to let me go/So she lead me down to the river/In the forest off the road/And her hair shone like silver/And her eyes were black as stone/She took down, down to the garden/And she left me all alone”), though you can’t help but think there are metaphors luring there somewhere. Eye For An Eye isn’t the revenge drama the title suggests, but rather another song of things past, fractured relationships and healing (“I heard somewhere they cut that old tree down/Oh, but I pray it was a lie/It’s time that we meet again/The line between now and then/If we let go of our pride/I promise everything will be alright”).
The final two tracks both feature viola, violin and cello, Frankie and Eva has a witty Bride of Frankenstein narrative with a call-and-response framework (“I brought you back to life/And now you’re here/I picked your best parts/I sewed you up nice/So now tell me dear/Do you feel alright… I’m feeling kind of weird/My hands don’t look like they used to/ There’s scars on my neck/And bolts in your neck/You look different too/I think I’m kind of scared of you”). It ends, then, with Sam Gelband joining on vocals for the five-minute plus dreamily swaying musical box lullaby Last Night, as they sing the surreal lyrics, “Last night you held me for the first time/A gentle breeze blew in through the open window/Surrounded by the soft glow of a candle/Burning down, melting everything around/From my body to the floor boards I can’t stop seeing your face…You are made of earth and wood/I’d love you all night if I could”.
While The Lostines’ eclectic yet familiar musical influences connect with the listener across their debut album, there is far more going on beneath the surface that makes this duo’s lyrical tales all the more alluring. It’s definitely time for more people to meet them.
Meet The Lostines is Released on April 26 on Gar Hole Records