The North Carolina-based folk duo Watchhouse has a new album entitled Rituals. It is the first album of original music that Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz have produced since 2021.

Two posts that continue to capture the interest of visitors to this site are my 2020 review of The warm, intimate, and compelling music of Watchhouse. and the 2023 review Watchhouse Duo goes back to the basics. I first heard Andrew and Emily—then known as Mandolin Orange—at the 2014 Red Wing Roots Music Festival and was instantly smitten. From the beginning they have crafted songs that are simple yet compelling.

Over the years these two musicians have become a family with children, the band has expanded to include other musicians, and they continue to produce warm, intimate music even as they became more widely known, explored new sonic palettes, and played larger venues.

The new record begins with Shape—Marlin’s lead vocal supported by the beautiful fiddle work of Frantz. As in so much of their work, Watchhouse is focused sonically and lyrically on beauty that takes us away from life’s everyday challenges. “Let’s find someplace to go/Beyond this to and fro” Marlin sings. The stripped down live version from the Bluebird Music Festival is just lovely. 

The album’s first single, All Around You, focuses on home and happiness. With a nice tenor guitar backing and beautiful duet vocals, home, the band tells us, is wherever happiness lies. “Can’t you feel it right behind you | Ain’t it always just ahead and all around you too.”

The live version of Glistening provides another great example of the sonic tone and lyrical imagery that Watchhouse is producing on this new album.

“Go fire your cannonball, go and fire away (fire away) | When the ashes fall we’ll start a brand new day | I love it when we talk like this | Red velvet in our eyes | It’s the only time we seem to understand

For seventeen years (seventeen years) and seventeen days (seventeen days) | The dawn breaks, and the morning birds sing | All the flowers by her head | turn and face the sun | Gilded by the dеw, just glistening”

I’m one who thinks the band would benefit by giving Emily more of the lead vocals. They do so on Firelight, which was captured in an April concert in Connecticut.

Finally, I love this live version of Patterns because it goes back to the band’s roots. As one reviewer has written,

“. . . the album’s last track, Patterns, is where Watchhouse, no matter their name, has always made its bread and butter—mandolin, gorgeous harmonies and warm imagery: ‘Ain’t it something, all the little patterns/That lead us home through our lives.’ Indeed, it’s a pattern that’s served Marlin and Frantz well.”

Rituals is another beautiful project by a band that continues to inspire year after year. Recommended.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez