Icy sparks and friendly wolves aplenty, as the Charm Of Finches sisters go the full fable……

Release Date: 19th April 2024

Label: Spunk Records

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

The two Australian sisters who comprise this pre-Raphaelite construction are quite the paradox. On paper they shouldn’t work, the idea of two impossibly young antipodean sisters, Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes, all soft focus diaphanous robes and cascading be-garlanded tresses, billowing forth. Well, such ideas have proven off-putting before, yet, musically, it not only works, it, to use the lingo of their homeland, it works bloody ripper. Look past the album covers, sorry, Girls, and put it in your player. This is the second album of theirs I have acquaintance of, and, like 2021’s Beautiful Oblivion, I love it. And I am not alone, as this live review from 2022 reveals. Historically, it is actually their fourth release, their debut dropping in 2016, and they are now less impossibly young, more just unreasonably, at 21 and 24, given their talent. So let’s now look past such prejudice and explore the goods.

The fairly instant Clean Cut opens proceedings, a strong indie-pop construction with deeper currents than that description usually offers. Clearly, setting aside the actual songwriting, it is their voices that pack the greatest punch, each sweet alone, but grabbing attention all the more as the sibling harmonies bolt on. They play, across the album, a roster of instruments, mainly of the stringed and percussive variety, with the ability to become a full string quartet between the two of them, let alone to provide guitars, harps and banjo. The rhythm section duties seem mainly from Michael Belyea’s drums and the bass of Daniel Ledwell, he also not unafraid to pick up brass duties and keyboards. He also produces, making for quite the tapestry of sound. This first track carries a rich wash, drawn from all, with additional fiddle and viola here from Indyana Kippin. It’s a great start, finding, unprompted, a mix of Fleetwood Mac and Lana del Rey about it.

Some piano opens up Atlantis, the Del Rey comparison again taking a wave. The song smoulders ethereally and it is hard to look away. If a smoulder can co-exist with ice, this is where it does. I could pretend this arises from the Melbourne siblings electing to record his set in a wintry Nova Scotia, at the other end of the earth, which is what they did, but, actually, they manage this contradiction, regardless and wherever. On My Own also has a piano brief, if gilded by a skittering synth and a steady beat, possibly also electronic. The two sisters keen together like sirens. A song about the mind always being mightier than better intentions: “But all the compasses and charts couldn’t sway this valiant heart.” It’s good.

Leave It All behind offers a different setting, with its plucked strings of harps and guitars, it framing, perhaps, the journey to make this record; leaving the “red gum tree” for the “snow beneath my feet.” The cello that seeps in between verses, and the warm rounds of banjo rolling, makes for a lilting song that conjures up home thoughts from abroad. If You Know Me is then perhaps the closest to a conventional love song, and features the honeyed tone of guest vocalist, Sam Bentley, in almost a call and response, possibly unspoken, between lovers. It should and could be the perfect backdrop for the horrors implicit within Married at 1st Sight (Australia), coincidentally screening as this record is released. (Don’t ask!)

Temporary Home is the simplest song here, a country-lite confection, the arrangement a shimmer of flickering guitars and swathes of keyboard wash. A slight false step from the layered complexity elsewhere, it takes Middle Of Your Mess to try and restore the mood. Initially it evokes a spectre of Kate Bush, ahead of loping off into more Mac-cy territory, but repeated listens unearth greater depth than it first seems to offer. In fact, it’ll be the chorus: “stuck in the middle, stuck in the middle of your mess“, that you’ll find yourself thinking of, and singing, sotto voce, in the days ahead.

Human begins all of a wobble, echoed keys and haunting solo vocal. I am none the wiser as to which sister sings what or when, possibly only to become clear in a live setting, no clues offered in the notes. (I wonder if they swap such duties, and bet they could.) A hollow clack of electronic percussion underlines the forward progression, the two now in harmony. With both melody and mood left to linger, this hits a high (iced) water mark. The words display, as they do elsewhere, the innate difference between the sexes and how we are, almost despite our shared humankind. Bend And Break is sequenced perfectly to capture further this incongruency, with brushed drums a slow metronome for the slowest waltz in the world. And is that sleigh bells I hear? It surely is.

If Suzanne Vega were to be cloned and to sing with herself, that is how the title track unwraps, together with the sometime middle European feel of that artist. Marlinchen is the character in the fairy tale, The Juniper Tree, who gathers her brother’s bones after he has been eaten by their father, and buries them under said tree. Which sounds not a bit of a stretch for the two sisters, whose whole ambience might come from a woodcut of the Brothers Grimm. Having said that, it is hope that breaks through, rather than horror, with piano giving some additional melancholic signage, over picked guitars. When it stops, on a penny, it is shocking and feels provocative, as maybe it should. Which is a good way to look in askance at final track, In The Dark. And, whilst, of course, if that is an omnipresent mood, with choppy cellos stamping out the daylight, the words point to such sparks as may guide the way ahead. Repetition is a strength here, multitracked harmonies shadowing the lead vocal; this is the forest at night, those backing vocals offering a reassuring lupine howl, yet another conflicting paradox with which to close the set.

This is distinct step forward from their earlier recordings, and, casting comparisons aside, together the whole is quite unlike anyone making music at this moment. They are about to tour this country, it, and they, surely worth attention. See the dates, below.

22 May – Glad Café, Glasgow

23 May – Orkney Folk Festival 

6 June – St Mary’s, Chester

7 June – Live Room, Saltaire

8 June – The Greystones, Sheffield

9 June – The Hives, Shrewsbury

10 June – Temperance, Lemington Spa

11 June – Kitchen Garden Café, Birmingham

13 June – Exeter Phoenix, Exeter

14 June – Bristol Flophouse, Bristol

16 June – Whitstable Sessions, Whitstable

18 June – The Fleece Inn Barn, Evesham

19 June – King’s Arm, Manchester

20 June – The Lexington, London

21 June – Ace Space, Newbury

22 June – Pound Arts, Corsham

23 June – The Folklore Rooms, Brighton

4-7 July – Gate To Southwell Festival, Nottinghamshire

In the meantime, here’s If You Know Me:

Charm Of Finches online Website / Facebook / X – formerly Twitter / Youtube / Instagram

Keep up with At The Barrier: Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / Spotify / YouTube