The Secret Sisters - Mind, Man, Medicine

On their excellent fifth studio album, Mind, Man, Medicine, sibling duo The Secret Sisters develop their brand of understated cosmic, country-brushed soul, corralling the gentility of their vocals and carefully placed kisses of instrumentation into something that lands heavily in the lap.

“Cosmic” has become a musical buzzword in the past year, but what started as simply a vibe has evolved into something more on-the-nose. In contrast, tracks like ‘Paperweight’ and ‘Space’ take an old school approach, understanding that the cosmos isn’t defined by the sense that humanity has tried to make of it via water signs and moon calendars, but rather a lawless vastness. It imbues a quiet confidence that allows them to switch deftly from swooping down into the desert on moody western guitars on the former and float weightlessly in the ether on the latter.

The restraint continues on the superb and unexpected Ray LaMontagne collab ‘All The Ways’, demonstrating that a vocal doesn’t have to be scratched and sobbing to be soulful. Similarly, the rain-on-the-window film score strings of ‘I Needed You’ give way to one final plink of piano, rounding itself off neatly.

Gentility doesn’t prevent the album from pulling punches when it chooses to, though. The shrewd and foreshadowing ‘If The World Was A House’ sounds like the anxiety-ridden product of an afternoon spent doom-scrolling, allowing the listener to swill in the realisation of a trick-title, for the world really is a house and we appear to be slowly watching it burn. There’s a similar ethos to standout track ‘Same Water’, where a bluesy vocal expertly matches the lyricism of what feels like an unfixable world we live in. “Balance out my chemicals and erase my recall / Mind or man or medicine, I have tried them all,” they plead.

Reminiscent of their Alabama countrymen, St Paul & The Broken Bones, who the album’s producer Alabama Shakes’ keyboardist Ben Tanner has also worked with, the influence of their Muscle Shoals upbringing is strong; classic and laid back, it produces a sparse, old-timey sound that will last well beyond current trends.

Some songs do get lost in familiar metaphors, like ‘Planted’ with its ode to the comfort we find in roots. But, like the world the sisters are preoccupied with, nothing is without its flaws. The world is messy, but The Secret Sisters’ elegant pen turns mess into high art.

8.5/10

The Secret Sisters 2024 project, Mind, Man, Medicine, is available March 29 via New West Records.

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