Last summer, smack in the middle of a bummer month of sweaty evenings and those weird emotionally flat days where you just kind of sit around and think about sad stuff and also how it's hot, I headed upstate, just outside of Delhi, New York where Kim Krans and Jonny Ollsin, the husband and wife duo behind Family Band, live in a cabin they built themselves. I don't bring that up to glamorize it or use it as a hook for their music, but it is important to who they are, and knowing that adds an extra dimension to their music (and, if you want to get really abstract about it, it adds a third member in the form of the cabin itself). The weekend I went, a lot of other people went too. We camped on the property. There were bonfires. It was vaguely like a music festival, but significantly more intimate. I can't say that it brought me out of the funk I was in, really, but it did help me understand it. Ollsin and Krans make deeply lonely music—which feels strange coming from a married couple. Krans' lyrics—which are smoky and filled with gothic despair right out of a Cormac McCarthy novel—are, at heart, insecure and forlorn, and Ollsin's guitar drifts moodily on the outskirts. To listen to Family Band is to take listening to Family Band very seriously. This isn't really music you're going to just throw on at a party (unless it's a really depressing party)—instead, it's music to help you figure yourself out. "Night Song" is the first single from their upcoming sophomore album Grace & Lies, out July 24th on No Quarter. "Night Song" is full-bodied and, of course, heavy. It feels strange to listen to it not in nature, but it doesn't feel wrong.
Download: Family Band, "Night Song"
