The Lowest Pair. The Perfect Plan. Thirty Tigers.

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the-perfect-plan-vinyl-black-borderFor an acoustic duo, The Lowest Pair electrified audiences when they toured the UK in 2018, their clinch mountain banjo sound exemplifying the spookier aspects of weird old Americana. Kendl Winter’s songs sounded as ancient as the hills while her chemistry with Palmer T. Lee was obvious in their playing and their harmonies. On record, they recorded as a banjo and guitar playing duo but they expanded their sound slightly on their last album, Fern Girl & Iceman which had a subdued rhythm section supported several of the songs. The Perfect Plan builds on this with several of the songs featuring a full band set up and there’s even a mellotron heard at one point. At times, the album reminds one of the early forays into country rock by the likes of Mike Nesmith, The Dillards and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band but the arrangements here, for the most part, complement the duo’s essential core. Their banjos and guitar still carry most of the weight while Winter’s delicate wisp of a voice remains intriguing and is bolstered by Lee’s more robust vocals.

The opening song, How Far I Would Go, is classic Lowest Pair fare as their guitars and voices entwine on a delicate love song with wonderful imagery. This blends into the second number as a flurry of banjo and guitar introduces It’s Too Late Babe with its driving percussion taking the duo into much rockier territory – imagine Karen Dalton fronting Fleetwood Mac with John Hartford soloing on banjo – it’s invigorating and still recognisably The Lowest Pair. However, the atavistic Wild Animals with its cluttered instrumentation, skittering banjo and doom laden organ, along with its mantra of, “Breathe in, breathe out” loses the duo’s essential simplicity.

The remainder of the album is much more successful as the pair deliver some sublime slices of, for want of a better word, cosmic country, as on the quintessential Shot Down The Sky, the balm which is Morning Light and the longing Take What You Can, all benefitting from the addition of pedal steel. There are also several numbers more akin to earlier recordings such as the wonderful duetting on the acoustic Cast Away and the strident We Are Bleeding with its time changes and banjo and guitar jamming. The disc ends with the title song which is perhaps the best instance here of the band presence enhancing the duo’s roots with organ and ambient guitar sounds gently nudging the banjos and voices forward while Winter sings wonderfully on a song suffused with regret but lifted by hope.

All in all, The Lowest Pair’s foray into a fuller sound here is a winner with several of the songs quite sublime. Producer, Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) is to be congratulated for his sympathetic handling of the project.

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The Lowest Pair. Fern Girl & Iceman. Team Love Records

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Some records just capture the essence of an old America, rooted in the hills and woods and the songs and tunes that early immigrants brought with them to the new world, sounds that informed the pioneers of what we now call country music. Generally it’s relatively unadorned, strings and a few other things, voices raw and elemental, spooky or life affirming, summoning up deep dark woods or back porch pickin’ and grinnin’. Blabber’n’Smoke has reviewed several artists who brilliantly  evoke this old time essence, Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, Pharis & Jason Romero and Anna & Elizabeth come to mind. Time then to add the duo of Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee, AKA The Lowest Pair to this club as Fern Girl & Iceman just oozes with that rarefied mountain air.

Basically a duellin’ banjo duet Winter and Lee are rooted in the Clinch Mountain musical style, one of the backbones of Appalachian music and listening to the album is somewhat akin to being near the clear mountain streams and wooded glens of Georgia. Recall if you will the early outdoors celebration of the river in Deliverance, the grand beauty of a wilderness and the music that grew out of it. The pair capture this perfectly with banjos strummed and picked, occasionally extended into virtuoso breaks, the vocals, Lee a rough-hewn tenor and Winter a little girl lost, her voice recalling Victoria Williams at times. In fact listening to her one can imagine that this is what Sissy Spacek would have sounded like if she had made a rootsy mountain album back in the seventies. Swapping lead vocals and harmonising excellently together the pair add guitar, tambourine and harmonica to their banjo playing while a spare backdrop of bass, drums, lap steel and fiddle offer occasional embroidery.

There are 11 songs here and all are of the highest quality. There’s the halting Stranger with its skeletal string picking, the old time waltz of Trick Candlelight with its delightful lap steel adornment and the driving ballad Sweet Breath which sounds like it came from the Child ballads. Waiting For The Taker is proof positive that a pair of banjos can summon up a storm of emotion as they flail together in a modal fashion which again recalls old time ballads of dread and doom. It’s chilling in its icy beauty with a tremendous instrumental break which recalls Indian sitar scales. The best is left to the end with the closing song How Can I Roll a perfect summation of the album, a frail cry into the wilderness with tentative picking, aching harmonies and ominous fiddle all folding into a plaintive lament. Overall Fern Girl & Iceman is an album that is fresh and timeless and they get extra points for naming themselves after an obscure John Hartford word poem. Check it out.

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