Their previous (and first ever) album together, Old Yellow Moon found the long-time musical associates team up for a Grammy award-winning collection that charmed alt. country fans with its deeply personal musical touchstones. This time around, they’ve come up with a more ambitious and varied collection that includes ballads and up-tempo country rockers, all given the contemporary Americana flavour thanks to producer Joe Henry.
The Traveling Kind features 11 tracks, including six new songs written by Harris and Crowell with co-writing by the likes of Mary Carr, Cory Chisel, Will Jennings and Larry Klein. Slightly at odds with the overall feel of the album, the opening title track is more of a folk-flavoured tune in a Simon & Garfunkel or early Dylan mode and finds them contemplating mortality – a consistent theme here. ‘No Memories Hanging Round’ is almost autobiographical, as they sing of past glories and the inevitability of slowing down: "Two old hearts... and two old fires who just won’t burn again”; the reflective ballad ‘You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try’ (“We must admit that we both thought that this was it”) covers similar lyrical territory.
The temperature is raised several notches on the incendiary southern soul of ‘Bring It On Home To Memphis’ and the bluesy stew of ‘The Weight Of The World’ – the latter featuring terrific slide guitar work – while their version of 'Just Wanted To See You So Bad' is just slightly less frantically-paced than Lucinda Williams' original. Meanwhile, the plaintive 'Higher Mountains' finds them back in ballad mode with gorgeous harmonies. Emmylou shines particularly brightly on the traditional-sounding tale 'Her Hair Was Red'.
Elsewhere, there's plenty of classic country twang and honky-tonk rhythms on 'If You Lived Here You'd Be Home'; accordions and fiddles adorn the Cajun-flavoured 'Le Danse de la Joie'. All told, a lovely record...