erasing clouds
 

The Chapin Sisters, Lake Bottom

by hiram lucke

There’s that scene in the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou where the sirens are singing to our fair heroes and as they sing in wet white gowns, Ulysses and gang are slowly narcotized by the song leaving them with stupid grins on their faces. The song is a lullaby telling a baby who has been left all alone to go to sleep, but you can’t help but hear and see that the sleep the sirens are singing of is the everlasting kind, lending the ghostly scene an ominous tone.

The music of The Chapin Sisters reminds me so much of that scene that I cannot replace it in my mind. It’s not necessarily the music, although the songs on Lake Bottom are a mix of roots music and pop sounding like Gillian Welch sitting in with Carole King, but the ethereal quality of the three sisters’ voices (they’re actually sisters, by the way—two daughters of Tom Chapin, Abigail and Lily Chapin, and their half-sister, Jessica Craven, the daughter of Wes Craven) leaves me staring into space with a stupid grin on my face. There’s that haunting and ominous quality, though, that comes through in songs like “Hey” in which the character questions a lover coming over one more time and whether it’s going to end in never talking to each other again.

Ghosts and demons figure prominently within the songs of The Chapin Sisters, but not in an overwrought goth-like expression. Like the best gothic literature, the ghosts and demons are as earthly as a lover and as scary losing control. The group may remind me (and you) of the sirens’ song, but in reality they’re singing the sirens’ lament of knowing the pain that is endured by everyone is the pain that comes with love.

{http://thechapinsisters.com}


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