by Phil Scarisbrick

A brief foray into the world of the Colorado twins, Companion’s Second Day of Spring is a unique, enthralling and essential slice of alternative folk

When we hear about the deep connection that songwriters share during the composition of their music, it is a reciprocal empathy that allows them act as a soundboard for each other’s experiences. Often used as a healing process, or a way of quantifying what has happened to them, the results we hear are usually a compromise of each composer’s emotional reaction to a similar scenario. Sometimes it can be one person’s story requiring the support of others to be told. When the composers in question are twins though, it offers a unique take on the chronicling of their lives. It is the purest form of empathy, as they’re often feeling the raw emotional impact as acutely as one another. 

Across Second Day of Spring – the debut album of Colorado natives Jo and Sophia Babb – we experience a spellbinding collage of intertwining guitars and vocal harmonies. Locking together like the roots of a mighty tree, it isn’t so much what is overt that keeps you hooked, but what lies just beneath the surface. Their synergetic connection veers on the full-on telepathic at times, offering unique and enthralling experience for the listener.

From the opening plucks of How Could I Have Known, through ten tracks of alternative folk, we get to know the Sisters Babb just a little bit better. If I Were A Ghost’s lackadaisical strums allow just enough space for subtle strings to accent the vocals, fading away as they sing ‘We used to spend all our nights talking / Now I just wander, wanting to find the voice that I left in our doorway’ before springing back to life for the final laments of ‘If I were a ghost in this house’.

The title track gives a visceral experience of staying in a relationship that you know you need to end, but don’t have the strength to. ‘Yes, things are better on paper / Oh, it’s easy to say / Things are good, still I cut my fingers / On the edges every day’ they sing before concluding, ‘I don’t know how to let you down / So, for right here, it’s all right here / So I guess I can stay a while’. 

Final track,  Waiting For You, punctuates the record with a final full stop that encapsulates everything that illuminates the album. The looping guitar picks, perfectly locked vocals and open wound lyrics create an atmosphere of kinship as we share in the dual experiences of these wonderfully-talented sisters. At only twenty six minutes long, it is brief yet important glimpse into a unique musical experience that feels completely enriching.