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reviews

hardened & tempered

9/7/2017

1 Comment

 

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Hardened and Tempered (from the album The Trailer Sessions)
The decisions of the characters that make their way through the songs of The Trailer Sessions walk a fine line. The album, the latest from Austin, Texas-based duo, Hardened and Tempered, edges out on branches growing from the same long ribbons of highway travelled by the musicians behind the words and music. The Trailer Sessions investigates the love/hate relationships between the humans standing in the songs and the stage of their surroundings. Hardened and Tempered look through microscopes of song that examines the flesh and blood bodies as they march towards sudden edges that fall into deep pits as well as soft ground that requires careful footfalls. Kristin Davidson and Carolyn Philips aka Hardened and Tempered infuse their characters with hard-won dignity and a pride born in beating the odds as they push against the grain, toasting the moon in a “Dry County”, finding fortune in the heat of another human with “My Wildest Ride”, taking a seat on the “Heartbreak Transit Line”, and reading the hard-luck history tacked to the walls of “House of the Soiled Dove”.
Hardened and Tempered turned to Grammy award winner Lloyd Maines to produce their debut, The Trailer Sessions. He backed the duo with some of the Austin A-list talent found in the Texas music capital for songwriting influenced by the time Kristin Davidson spent living in an Airstream on the Texas-Mexico border. The Trailer Sessions shares “Family Secrets” on gently plucked notes and warm harmonies, weathers “Hard Winds” fortified by a tough groove as it makes its way on a current of Tex-Mex rhythms for “Cross Over the Rio Grande’ while Hardened and Tempered make plans for “Leavin’ in the Morning” on an assured beat and step lightly on the shuffle of “Path Already Paved”.
Listen and buy the music of Hardened and Tempered from
 AMAZON 
https://www.hardenedandtempered.com/

1 Comment
Leslie
9/8/2017 10:22:43 am

This CD is on regular rotation in my car. The harmonies and lyrics are both evocative and transformative. There is a great pacing in the track sequence, moving from slow and heart wrenching to upbeat and pulse-quickening. The musicianship lives up to the demands of the lyrics, and then some. Highly recommend.

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