Brother Sister

For the better part of two decades, the Watkins Family Hour has been a stationary carnival situated at the Largo in Los Angeles, a collective anchored by Sara and Sean Watkins and featuring a rotating cast of characters. In 2015, the Watkins headed into the studio accompanied by Fiona Apple, Benmont Tench, Sebastian Steinberg, and others to attempt to capture their on-stage lightning in a bottle and they did a terrific job. Five years later, the siblings take a different tactic for the second album by the Watkins Family Hour: as the title Brother Sister suggests, they keep it simple, focusing on their own familial dynamics. Working with producer Mike Viola, Sara and Sean Watkins devote the majority of Brother Sister to original compositions designed to showcase how their voices intertwine. Much of the time, they explore gentler territory, keeping things hushed even on veiled protest songs like Fake Badge, Real Gun. The quiet dynamics wind up placing an emphasis on how the Watkins feed off each other as instrumentalists -- Bella and Ivan, one of records lead singles, is a duet between their violin and guitar -- but it also puts their delicate melodicism in sharp relief on The Cure and the gently propulsive Just Another Reason, which couldve been a pop tune in another arrangement. This intimacy is quite different than what the Watkins Family Hour served up in 2015 or on-stage on the Largo, but the group does touch on that raucous, open-heartedness with a closing cover of Charley Jordans old country-blues standard Keep It Clean, featuring cameos from John C. Reilly, David Garza, and Gaby Moreno. Arriving after such a sweet, soft collection of songs, its a welcome burst of gusto, yet the rest of Brother Sister is attractive in its own right, highlighting the family bond between the titular Watkins siblings. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine