The Secret Sisters stepped back in time to make this debut album but these songs are brought up to date just by being sung. Under the guidance of producer Dave Cobb and discerning executive producer T Bone Burnett, Laura and Lydia Rogers shunned digital equipment and modern mics to record using techniques – and tape – true to the 1950s. The results are sincere, stylish and anything but stale.

Clocking in just under the thirty minute mark, this eponymous first album is curiously cover-dominated, consisting mostly of songs by big figures like Hank Williams and Bill Monroe. Showing a keenness to convey their country credentials and respect for the repertoire is one thing – but what might seem like safety in terms of track choice really takes gumption to accomplish. Their significant success is in dusting down the forgotten or brushed aside, as with a rumbustious, vigorous version of the George Jones song ‘Why Baby Why’. Others share this upbeat spirit in a first-throes-of-love, butter-wouldn’t-melt way. It’s country music that has packed its bags and gone away on a weekend jaunt.

The duo also offer up a couple of Laura Rogers’ own songs, which, impressively, more than hold their own. The light and lilting ‘Tennessee Me’ (Song of the Day #201) opens the album and sets the tone of optimistic old-time country pop. ‘Waste the Day’ is equally charming, a rippling, ribboning tune and an eminently hummable highlight of an infectious record.

The Rogers’ genuine kinship, close harmonies and shifts between songs from romantic, soft and sorrowful (‘Do You Love An Apple’) to Cliff Friend’s ‘All About You’, a delightful romp for the backing band, is very Everly Brothers – and all the better for it. As far as I know, though, Phil & Don never went and spoiled it all by recording ‘Somethin’ Stupid’. Of course, the sisters sing immaculately and so survive the song’s inherent schmaltz but it’s an unnecessary selection, where the orchestration cannot help but evoke a karaoke backing track. It’s a single, forgiveable blip that I’d hate to overstate – not too saccharine, nor divorced from neighbouring songs – and I’ve never heard a pleasanter rendition. I wouldn’t want to, either. Ever.

Mostly though, this smoothest of sets slipstreams by, without being over-polished (thanks to that period recording style). Laura and Lydia Rogers look back for inspiration and create a rosy idyll, so firmly rooted in the songs of another era that there is a time slip despite The Secret Sisters’ youthful vim. You can have too much of exactly this sort of good thing and there are reasons music went on to twist rather than stick – but there’s joy to be found looking back once in a while, especially with these two singers making retro fresh.