I may be a mere 34 years of age (actually I am an old man in the current roots landscape…) but my childhood was defined by music and artists that came in the decades before the 80s. Thanks partly to my parents album collection and re-runs of Happy Days, the Monkees or anything really on Nick at Night. The days of smacking the jukebox to kick into some Nat King Cole or the Everly Brothers.
It’s a beautiful thing that those even younger than I have a true love, appreciation and passion for the great American Songbook of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Kathleen Parks and Brad Bensko‘s “Kat & Brad” is absolutely exploding with that sentimentality for the arrangements and performance style of songs from the past. They pursue it in a way that is stylistically alluring and executed without flaw.
Overly flowing with absolutely mesmerizing and buoyant harmonies. “That” sound on the acoustic guitar. Partly how well finger picked it is and mixed with something I just can’t describe…but when you hear it you know it clearly. The aesthetic of the record could just as easily have been released in the late 60s or 3 weeks ago. Everything about it gleaming bright shiny, smile inducing oooh’s and ahhh’s. The urge to slowly sway or tap your feet is unavoidable.
While the harmonies are pure and utter perfection, what is perhaps most impressive is how well each of their voices stands on their own. Each of them sitting in a similar tonal range, but the ability in which they both can explore that range is impressive and paints the measures of each song with a certain pizzazz and lifting sensibility. We have grown to know and absolutely adore Kathleen Park’s voice over the years, but typically in a much more bluegrass or roots kind of staging. Here she tackles the line between the advent of British invasion and popular American music in a way that is so natural, its awe-inspiring. Bensko honestly feels like he could have been writing and singing songs along with Paul and John. The freshness and sprightful nature of his vocal floating and hanging in the midst of the arrangements.
I’m hard pressed to pick out a handful of favorite songs on the record. After listening through a few times, I find a new song or part to love. But the throbbing keys of “Don’t Come Over Tonight” paired alongside the high whisper of Parks’ voice is something that keeps pulling me back in again and again. There is a slight funkiness that lives in the song courtesy of bouncing fiddle bow and those piano lines.
Music is supposed to make you feel something and I will be the first to admit that the vast majority of the music I listen to is, maybe, a bit on the downtrodden and heartwrenching side thematically. These two together make me feel something entirely different. In listening to this collection of songs the prodigious amount of joy that is injected into my entire being is immeasurable. It just makes me happy to hear them sing and play together. And sometimes that simple feeling is enough to unleash a complex rush of emotion and feeling that can let you ride that high for a long time to come.
In the end, for a record focused on a certain time and place for music we are reminded that even small stretches of time periods can contain so much and ‘Kat & Brad’ visits all of these places and more. Carving out their own niche in bringing this music back into the current times in a way that I am not sure many other artists could. Their diversity and complex ability to stretch the bounds of their own creativity is limitless and I cannot wait to see what they plan to cook up next…