Mandolin Orange
Album: Such Jubilee
Label: Yep Roc
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.mandolinorange.com/

The fourth album, their second for the label, by North Carolina folk/Americana duo Emily Frantz and Andrew Marlin is a gently understated affair comprising of 10 wistful numbers touching on themes of home, life on the road and love. Despite their name, mandolin doesn't dominate, the instrumentation shared between fiddle, banjo and acoustic guitar with John Oliver guesting on electric guitar and organ, resulting in a stripped down, ruminative mood that's further accentuated by Marlin's laid back, wearied vocal.

Although the Wurltizer-accompanied Daylight picks up the tempo slightly, there's nothing here to prompt outbreaks of foot tapping and thigh slapping, rather more suited to musing on the porch on rustic dusks, things getting under way with Old Ties and Companions, a song about taking stock of those special moments while they're here. A similar idea runs through Settled Down, a slightly bluesy air informing a reflection on taking time to settle into a relationship while Little Worlds and That Wrecking Ball both embrace thoughts of mortality and the passing of time and Of Which There Is No Like has the couple duetting on a song about coming home, literally and metaphorically.

Elsewhere songs tell more specific tales; the dusty, acoustic strummed Rounder a cowboy tradition narrative about a drifter facing the rope after a shooting, Jump Mountain Blues draws on folklore for the story of a Native American girl who threw herself off a mountain rather than marry a man she didn't love and how her father is condemned to watch her ghost plunge to her death every night and, again concerned with death, Blue Ruin is a retelling of the Sandy Hook school shootings in Conneticut, imaging the parents of the dead still facing Christmas morning without their kids.

Marlin takes lead vocal on all but one of the songs, Frantz stepping into spotlight for the folksy lonesome love song From Now On, suggesting that future albums should see her increasingly playing more than just a harmony role. It could, perhaps, have done with a little more variation in the pacing (though no one took Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago to task for not being sufficiently rock 'n' roll), but if you're in the mood for something introspective and contemplative then this is cause for celebration.

Mike Davies