Secret Sisters – Saturn Return

I checked out this album because of Brandi Carlile. I officially became a fan of Brandi after watching her performance of “The Joke” at the 2019 Grammys. I had listened to her before, but not really LISTENED. So when Brandi started to hype this album, I knew I was going to LISTEN.

The Secret Sisters are a singing and songwriting duo consisting of vocalists Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle. Laura and Lydia are sisters from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Their style is Americana and they remind me of the Everly Brothers, mid-70s Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and of course Brandi Carlile.

The album was produced by Carlile and the Hanseroth twins and recorded in Carlile’s home studio in Washington state.

Per the Sister’s website:

The album is named after an astrological occurrence in which the planet Saturn returns to the same place in the sky that it occupied at the moment of a person’s birth. During this phase, which happens approximately every 29 ½ years, said Laura, a woman “comes into her own and has this awakening in herself about who she is as a person. It can also be a very traumatic time where your whole world just seems to radically shift.”

There is nothing better than sibling harmonies and the Rogers sisters are top-notch. They trade lead vocals song to song and sometimes within the song.

The sisters are great songwriters.  The mark of a great song is that it sounds familiar yet new; Saturn Returns effortlessly embraces that contradiction. They are able to comfortably convey both sweet and dreadful memories with élan.

The album has a gorgeous 70s singer-songwriter vibe. The Carlile/Hanseroth production modernizes that vibe into a perfect folk-pop sound that sounds timeless.

Don’t be deceived by the gentle beauty of this album, this is deep and soulful art.