Larkin Poe – Fall / Winter

The final two instalments of Larkin Poe‘s four seasons EP set find sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell still singing of love, longing and loss. Any country music typology must consider such studies in yearning to be a staple category and for all the rue, unease and ardour on offer there is little to distinguish or elevate this band above contemporaries, however comfortably they keep their company.

That the sleeve and inset illustrations elicit more seasonal feeling than any of the tracks on either disc suggests the generic sound of some of the songs. Familiarity does not preclude pleasure, however, and Fall / Winter both offer enjoyable moments. The first disc is bookended by the swaggering melancholy of ‘Memories’ and shimmering, sapient ‘Fall from the Tree’. The nostalgia trap theme of the former, indulging in reminiscences better left behind, feeds following tales of near misses (or rather near Mrs) before the final track builds, almost ominously slowly, to a closing observation that resonates: “In all of the lives we’ve lived / And every life to be / The singular guarantee: / Leaves must fall from the tree”. The metaphor might not be much of an image in itself but serves as both the EP’s arching thesis and a pay-off for the absence of any seasonal reference hitherto.

Unfortunately, there is not much of note amongst the intervening tracks, all dogged by often unattractively insistent fretting. ‘Just in Case’ turns this angst into a proper rock-out, while ‘Spooked’ births a gently repetitive coda. Neat choruses and these occasionally quirky variations aside, the real hallmarks of the set are the sometimes idiosyncratic vocals – it can be a squeeze or stretch to fit the lyrics to the line – and their place in the mix, too frequently overridden by production and the over-complicated instrumentation’s distracting empty flourishes.

The Winter EP also starts promisingly: ‘Desert Dream’ is just as natty and polished, without being stylish or gleaming. Again, there is too much swirling production – no rising vocal is without an accompanying swell, rendering the sound both less personal and also less redolent of a barren landscape. Perhaps I’m being too literal (and despite the arrangement, the track’s tone does achieve a slight shift in atmosphere away from tepid autumnal twilight, towards something sparser) but wintry desolation and grandeur are never delivered – only more indistinct insistence and driving, overburdened melodies. The lyrics are often clever, as on Sappho-borrowing ‘Taller Far than a Tall Man’ but so lovesick most of the time that two EPs’ worth begin to feel like an overdose (never mind what came before). For lyrics about a “heart still frozen” (‘Cure for the Common Cold’) this is more lukewarm brine than pure, crystalline ice.

I might have failed to convey to this point how capable it all is, if perhaps less experimental than Spring or Summer – but the formula needs a more exquisite sound to escape the shiny haze. The final ‘This Girl’ concedes a simpler arrangement but cannot resist its own instrumental indulgences and overall, both Winter and Fall lack the contrast and poise required to be anything more than medleys of melodious mediocrity. Nevertheless, they are a competent and intermittently enjoyable end to an EP series a little more ambitious in conception than execution.