‘Mind, Man, Medicine’ by the Secret Sisters
‘Mind, Man, Medicine’ by the Secret Sisters
After two albums produced by spiritual sibling Brandi Carlile—whose support might have revived their career fortunes—and her cohorts, twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, the Secret Sisters craft their fifth album, Mind, Man, Medicine, to embrace a wide definition of what folk music can be.
Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle, actual biological sisters, also extend their family to include John Paul White, late of the Civil Wars, and Ben Tanner, an engineer and musician who’s worked with Jason Isbell and Alabama Shakes. Together, the four co-produce eleven songs with expansive coziness: an intimacy that somehow extends to the horizon.
“I Needed You” encapsulates this approach: against a rich backdrop of strings by the studio orchestra from FAME (the Muscle Shoals, Alabama locale where Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and the Osmond Brothers recorded), and guided through waltz tempo by piano from co-writer K.S. Rhoads, Rogers and Slagle portray all-consuming love with arch intensity to rival Regina Spektor.
With “If the World Was a House,” dulcimer and synthesizers lend a haunted quality to atmospheric harmonies, reminiscent of indie duo Azure Ray, and offer elegance to metaphors that, while often obvious—“This house is leaning left and right”—hope for the common humanity that John Lennon tried to be optimistic about in “Imagine.”
The Secret Sisters also put on their prettiest cowboy boots for Larry Campbell’s fiddle and the overall honky-tonk drawl of “Paperweight”; express hurt and desire as openly as any classic girl group in “Never Walk Away”; and, with the deliberately overwrought help of singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne, find the sweet spots of Bonnie Raitt-style soul in “All the Ways.”
Rogers and Slagle alternately cede and share the vocal spotlight, and their voices are never less than solidly tuneful and earnestly emotive. No matter how far they wander stylistically, their consistency brings every song on Mind, Man, Medicine back home.
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