Illustrated Short Stories

Twin sisters Charlotte and Laura Carrivick grew up playing music together and have been performing professionally since 2006. While mostly a duo, The Carrivick Sisters have also been part of other bands and projects over the years, perhaps most notably the UK-based International Bluegrass Music Association Award-nominated Midnight Skyracer (who, despite this unlikely support for a band from the ‘wrong side’ of the Atlantic, recently announced their retirement from playing together, a great shame).

The sisters’ seventh studio album as a duo, and their first since 2013, boasts 12 graceful and engrossing tracks informed by their passion for traditional American old-time and bluegrass music well-seasoned with English folklore. It features their signature sibling harmonies and tasteful musicianship across guitars, mandolin, fiddle, banjo and dobro. The confidence and conviction resounding in Illustrated Short Stories’ tales of sorrow, thwarted love, cursed churchyards and heartbroken hounds occasionally makes it hard to believe that all the songs (and one jaunty instrumental closing track) are contemporary originals penned by the sisters, rather than plucked from some dusty manuscript.