Born Strangers, the second full-length album by The Montvales, a folk duo composed of Sally Buice and Molly Rochelson, invites listening—real listening—as the pair of singer-songwriters weigh in on their world. Buice admits that the songs on the album “end up sounding a lot more powerful and hopeful than we felt. I think they did a good job of twisting the circumstances into something better.”
The new album marks a departure from the sparser sound of their first album Heartbreak Summer Camp, with Buice on banjo and Rochelson on guitar as the sole accompaniment. The first album was recorded, as they write in their liner notes, “in a living room just before the world shut down in spring of 2020.” That album had a simpler, more stripped-down sound. They were ready to start the album tour when they found themselves, like everyone else, in lockdown.
Rochelson said the pandemic “hit at exactly the moment when we had this first round of songs that have been percolating for a long time out of our system. We were getting ready to make this big life change, and then we were thwarted by circumstance. But it was a circumstance happening to everybody else too, so looking back, it was a reallyfertile ground for [asking ourselves] what kind of lives are we going to lead and how is everybody else handling this? All of that shows up in those songs.”
For the new album, recorded at the Tractor Shed Studio in Nashville, producer Mike Eli LoPinto (guitarist for Chris Stapleton) brought together a full band of top-notch studio musicians. Rochelson noted that they while they weren’t sure how the new album would turn out with a full band sound, they “wanted to try painting with a wider array of colors.” Buice first met LoPinto while working on a ranch in Colorado. She said, “he got what we were going for from the beginning but also proposed ideas we would never have thought of,” resulting in exciting, unexpected turns.
Describing the theme of the album, Buice came up with the word self-determination, Buice said, adding, “That’s a thread that runs through the whole album. These are deeply personal songs that came from stories of friends and neighbors, especially throughout 2020 when things were locked down and absolutely going wild, when people were fighting to keep hope alive.” The thread of hope runs through the tracks they describe as “songs for uncertain times.”
The title song “Born Strangers” which they admit can be considered a breakup song, unlike most of the tracks. But Rochelson says it also represents a “bid for self-determination moment,” which does align with the rest of the songs. Even the title serves as a subtle play on words, an example of what they call “an experience of otherness that runs throughout the record.”
Many of the songs evoke images of home, some unsettling—not just the metaphorical place in “Empty Bedrooms” but also in “Woman of God” the rubble of the hospital where they were born. The lyrics also consider change beyond their control. In “One More Winter,” they sing, “This summer’s been off the rails / burning in the foothills” and in “Above the Tennessee,” they refer to “biblical floods [that] come once or twice a year now.” But in “Lou,” the first single released from the album, written after the birth of Buice’s niece, they imagine the future she will inherit. Buice admits that after experiencing “a time with a lot of anger about the prospects for the future, that [song] was an attempt to try a gentler tactic and focus on hope instead.”
Throughout the album, the pair’s lyrics are delivered with their finely tuned harmonies, which have been described as “boisterous” and “joyful.” Buice and Rochelson grew up in East Tennessee near Knoxville and started singing together as young teenagers. “For a long time,” Buice said, “it was just fun. We didn’t think too hard about how it sounded. We just enjoyed the long process of learning how to sing together. It wasn’t a sound that immediately happened.” The pair started busking around Knoxville. Buice described their “early experience of rejection by whoever happened to be on Market Square and didn’t sign up to hear a folk duo, noting that it gave them “a lot of practice with showing up for whoever is there.” Rochelson added that it also helped them learn to project their voices.
They went their separate ways for college, Buice to University of Tennessee and Rochelson to Warren Wilson College near Asheville, NC, where she studied sociology and gender studies. Afterwards, they explored their career options. Rochelson moved to Atlanta for a year and worked in the abortion care and reproductive rights world there, then eventually moved back to Knoxville working in the same field. After college, Buice taught English in France, then worked in nonprofits, “supporting small farmers and trying to make local food more accessible,” something she still cares about. After exploring their options, the duo decided they wanted to be full-time musicians and decided to take the plunge. They relocated to Cincinnati, which offered a lower cost of living as well as “a lot of beautiful woods, parks, and cool buildings.”
Writing all their own songs, each will sometimes bring a song to the table for help with finishing touches, but the duo say they work best when they totally co-write. Part of the charm of their music is their delivery of songs, more rhythmic than metered. Comfortable with their phrasing, they joke that when presenting their songs to the band during recording sessions, LoPinto asked if Montvale was French for “extra bar.” The poetic nature of the lyrics also bears evidence of their emphasis on language. Both took creative writing courses in college, but most of their songwriting skills have developed through their collaboration.
The full-band sound of Born Strangers offers a listening experience that crosses genre lines. Although a bit more folk/singer-songwriter than bluegrass, they incorporate the simple instrumentation from their debut album, but the songs expand with the addition of keys, particularly the organ intros that open several of the tracks, giving way to fiddle and banjo, as well as cello, drums, and more. The playfulness of their harmonies and alternating melodies, softens the tensions in the lyrics, inviting listeners along for this ride.
As The Montvales head out on their album tour, they are playing most of the shows as a duo, as they have in the past. After all, Rochelson pointed out, “we’re used to having to fill out a whole stage’s worth of sound with just the two of us.” For their two big album release shows in Cincinnati and Knoxville, however, they have assembled are a band of friends from Cincinnati, as well as Holden Bitner of Nashville, who played cello on the album.
With their collaboration built on years of friendship, put to the test while sharing a 700-square-foot apartment during the pandemic, Sally Buice and Molly Rochelson look forward to the tour, giving audiences an authentic taste of their new music from an album with lasting power.
https://www.themontvales.com