The Marriage - Imagining Sunsets (2020) Hi-Res

Despite the band name, The Marriage are a musical rather than a connubial relationship, Kirsten Adamson and Dave Burn are a new Edinburgh/London based UK Americana duo, formerly both members of Ahab and Adamson the daughter of Big Country funder Stuart.

Coloured by Joe Harvey-Whyte’s pedal steel, opening with Diamonds, a song about smalltown young lovers and impossible to keep drunken vows (“high as the night/ sky/Slipped on my sick/Made promises/You and I know deep inside/We couldn’t keep if we tried”), it’s a fairly laid back, low-fi warm and melodic affair with the emphasis on acoustic guitars and their harmonies, often more Richard and Linda Thompson than Gram and Emmylou.

Dave on lead and with some sparse piano backing, Our Heart is another song of lost souls and bruised romance (“our heart’s in a fight for its life still laughing at the wind like a witless child”) with its images of backstreets, spoiled slightly by the abrupt fade at the end. Fred Abbot is behind the keys on the folksy colours of For Worse Or For Better, another somewhat downbeat account of birds of a feather pairing up “Drunk at the wedding of our ex-lovers” but finding that the nest isn’t as easily shared as they’d assumed and “left alone in our sorrow/Imagining sunsets we’ll ride into”. By contrast, one of the few songs where electric guitar takes a more prominent role, the waltzing Toast, a number about an impulsive affair (“You might never meet my mum/But right now you’re turning me on”) has a sunnier outlook (“Burning Toast never felt so fun, can’t imagine I’d feel this way with just anyone”), the song notes describing it as about “finding someone who helps you find room in your life to be stupid”.

Introduced by keening pedal steel with Kirsten in the spotlight, shaded by a restrained twang, Floating In Space captures those post-break-up moments (“Getting used to being the only one around in my place”) when you’re overcome by a feeling of meaninglessness, as she sings “When I go to bed I don’t picture the smile face on your face or remember the last word you said…I just want to cry about nothing tonight”. It’s followed by the album’s first single, pedal steel again underscoring the emotions, the achingly lovely Dreamers, perhaps the most Richard & Linda sounding of the numbers, about getting together one last time (“why don’t we play pretend, stop acting like we’re cool, it’s been so long, why don’t we act like fools”) and “Love until the debt comes/Knocking on our iron door”.

Having drawn that comparison, there is, however, distinct Emmylou echoes to Kirsten as she sings lead on True Anger, a song about when love turns toxic (“You get home every night and you turn the tv on/We’ve nothing left to dream about/Don’t have to look too hard to see the beating of true anger in your heart”). By contrast and returning to early Thompson tones with Dave channelling Richard, The Deal finds the song’s narrator who still has feelings for his ex even though she’s moved on (“now I’m walking down the street, with another box of high heeled shoes, you say ‘can’t believe you’re helping me’ when you know I’d do anything for you”).

Dave again on lead, the strummed Buddy is a song of loss of a close friendship (“On warm summer days I want to bury those blue skies, bury them deep”) and then, set to a simple strum it’s back to wallowing in regrets of a broken relationship with Too Late To Cry About It Now (“old pizza boxes and all the leftovers, cover the living room floor, among all the mess, see the strap of your dress. I’d call but I don’t have a phone anymore”) that would have fit perfectly on I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight had it been recorded in Austin.

After all the tears and regrets, the album finally ends on a kind of upbeat note and with the only involvement of Rob Heath’s thumping drums as the sprightly Celtic coloured (and a touch Big Country) folk rock Box And Burn It advises to gather together all the resentments and problems that keep going through our mind and having a mental bonfire of them because “Whatever you’ve got it doesn’t define you/Whatever you’ve lost you’re still alive”.