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Caitlin and Will, Caitlin and Will

review by dave heaton

I don’t have cable TV, and don’t generally track winners of television music competition shows (food competitions: another story), so I can’t tell you much about Caitlin (Fisher) and Will (Snyder)’s rise to fame outside of what I’ve read: they won the first season of CMT’s Can You Duet?. Their first EP, released post-win, is titled, simply, Caitlin and Will.

It’s a decent effort, but I probably wouldn’t be writing about it if not for the first song “Even Now”, which is a stunner.

You don’t get far in the country-music industry without the ability to sing, and they both can. But it’s what you do with those voices that counts. “Even Now” has a starkness to it that boosts the song’s directness, aiming their voices right at us. It’s a lovers’ duet, a song of resolution after squabbles that were devastating for both parties. Each singer takes a turn singing their side, and then they sing together over more dramatic music, expressing defeat and hope. The bluntness of their separate stories, the way they tell the whole story through choppy but visceral fragments, and the way the instruments hold back while they do, is part of the impact. But that impact is quadrupled by the last few seconds, where they sing the same complaints that opened the song, but do it together this time. The song uses a typical Nashville songwriting tactic – “even now” means both “even at this point, after all of this time” and “we’re even now” – but it’s their singing that truly sells us on it.

They sing as well on the rest of the EP, but they don’t sing as well together. The rebirth theme of the Caitlin-sung “Born Again” will no doubt resonate strongly with religious-minded folk; the Will-sung “Your Tears Are Comin’” may please some wishing for more of a bluesy-barn-raiser, though it feels rather boiler-plate to me. “Address in the Stars”, the heartstring-pulling ballad, is sung powerfully by Caitlin, though the sentimentality overwhelms. It, unsurprisingly, seems to be replacing "Even Now" as the radio single. “Dark Horse”, which does have both singing lead, and the Will-sung “Leaves of September” have fire to them, at least. The former’s line “everybody loves a dark horse baby” may remind some of their unlikely route to success, but is it really that unlikely, in this day and age?

{http://www.caitlinandwill.com/}


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