Queen of Eyes

Take a pair of harmonising female vocalists, ask them to record outside a one-room cabin on an island off Washington state and you get the heartwarming sounds of West of Roan’s Queen of Eyes. Equipped with only a microphone, fiddle, harmonium, acoustic guitar and one bench to squeeze on, duo Annie Schermer and Channing Showalter lean heavily on Celtic folk, raw Americana and explorations into their own ‘inner worlds and under worlds’ on their second album. The first track ‘The Bell’ opens with the haunting drone of the fiddle that permeates the album, alongside spare lyrics and gentle vocals that evoke the great outdoors. Queen of Eyes’ gem, ‘Bread of Life’, proceeds with a slow waltz finger-picked rhythm blended with melodic harmonium. ‘October Dance’ is a 43-second instrumental that will get you step dancing as though you were in Dublin’s Temple Bar. The songs are sweet sounding but lack variation, perhaps understandably given the project’s unobtrusive means.