There’s nothing like a well-suited collaboration. Sarah Lee Langford released one of my favorite albums of 2019, Two-hearted Rounder. Its moody atmosphere serves as a neat counterweight to Will Stewart’s breezy Slow Life, which came out earlier this year. The pair’s label, Cornelius Chapel Records has been quietly releasing some of the most exciting Americana around, and Stewart and Langford’s team-up has some magic of its own. Bad Luck & Love provides some classic country-style tearjerkers with a sharp eye towards contemporary storytelling and a circa-2020 je ne sais quois of “I know how we all got here but I’m too defeated to do anything about it.”
“Gun Powder” features the pair’s harmonies to great effect. Langford and Stewart’s voices blend as an indication of solidarity — distinct but not necessarily unified. Langford’s leads on songs of bleak disappointment and running out of options are softened by Stewart’s warmth, the perfect spoonful of sugar for some deeply bitter medicine.
That warmth only gets you so far, though. “Bad Luck and Love” exemplifies beautiful, tender storytelling of two imperfect people trying their very best — maximizing the potential of the pair’s duets. Things almost certainly aren’t going to work out, but you get the sense that the ill-fated pair hopes for the best for each other.
Stewart draws another luckless character sketch on “Aimless Love.” The song is soft and vulnerable, almost humorous but for the pain inherent in Stewart’s approach.
At the end of the day, though, these songs are about trucking along anyway, and hoping — truly against hope — that it’ll all work out. It’s both a somber and uplifting realization that it’s hard to know what’s around the bend. Who knows? Maybe we’ll all get some good luck.
Sarah Lee Langford — Instagram