From The Archives
White & Williams, The Civil Wars
This essay originally appeared on criticsatlarge on September 3, 2013
Nothing reveals the volatility of the music business more than the early breakup of a band. With the twosome known as The Civil Wars made up of John Paul White and Joy Williams, their recent split is also a loss to the music world. The duo started out with great promise in 2009, but ended after four years of considerable success that included two Grammy awards in 2012. When I reviewed Barton Hollow, the band’s debut album in 2011, I thought it was one of the strongest independent releases of the year. Ironically, a particular song on that album, “Forget Me Not,” offered hope, “Let’s write a song for us and sing until we’re old and gray.”
Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars, 2011. Grammy winner for Best Folk Album in 2012.
So the duo’s second self-titled record, released August 6th, is as much an epitaph to this musically astute duo. It’s hard for me not to think about the group’s breakup when I hear this record, even though most of these songs were written in 2012 at the height of their success. Hearing these tunes through the prism of the band’s split is unavoidable to me.
The album opens with a meaningful track that oozes regret: “Oh I wish that I could go back in time...I wish you were the one that got away.” It’s a convincing performance for Williams, as is most of her work on this disc. As vocalists, the pair carry a lot of emotional weight in their voices, even more than on Barton Hollow. There’s a self-assurance on The Civil Wars especially on “I Had Me A Girl”, a heavy-sounding blues. It’s followed up by the intimate “Same Old Same Old,” with lyrics that offer little hope for a fading relationship: “I want to leave you, I want to lose us, I wanna give up but I won’t...but if you think that I can stay in the same old, same old, well I don’t”.
The beauty of the Civil Wars’s music has always been the strong pulse of their songs. Williams sings a line followed by White’s response, then the two double on a refrain. It’s beautifully arranged and the best version is “Dust to Dust,” released as the first single off the record. White sings, “You’re like a mirror, reflecting me,” Williams responds, “It takes one to know one, so take it from me, you’ve been lonely...we’ve been lonely too long.” But all is not doom and gloom for the pair, because they sing a great gospel-oriented song, “From This Valley”. Written in 2010, it was first on a collection of contemporary Gospel songs called, Mercyland: Hymns For the Rest of Us. I prefer an earlier version because it’s a little more buoyant; recorded when times were much better for the duo. But this one still won me over.
The Civil Wars features a rather curious version of the great R&B tune “Tell Mama,” recorded by Etta James in the late Sixties that became her soul-stirring trademark. The Civil Wars turn it into a country ballad, miles away from James’s urban single. While I admire the attempt to give the song some introspection, it’s the least successful track on the album. “Tell Mama” simply doesn’t capture the gritty, sexual charge of the original. And while the Civil Wars have charmed us with brilliant covers of Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”, and Leonard Cohen, “Dance Me To The End of Love”, but this one limps.
The Civil Wars debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard charts after its release, selling a reported 116,000 copies in the first week, proving that the duo reached and connected with the audience they deserved. Pity they couldn’t keep it together long enough to share the wealth and the love between them.