A review of our album “The Anchor” from Belgium-based blog Rootstime. The translation is below:
Original: http://rootstime.be/index.html?http://rootstime.be/CD%20REVIEUW/2018/JAN1/CD75.html
Translation:
Whitherward’ is an indie-brass quartet from Nashville, Tennessee that originally performed as a duo with singer Ashley E. Norton and her life partner singer-guitarist Edward A. Williams. After a while violinist Stephanie Groot joined the formation and more recently completed bassist Patrick Hershey the quartet. Their sound as foursome influenced by rock, folk, jazz and singer-songwriter music is now clearly audible for the first time on their fifth album “The Anchor”. That is actually the first full-fledged studio album after the release of four previous EPs: “Stardust” in 2014, “Music Monster” and “Vulnerable” in 2015 and “Clockwork Heart” in 2016, all of which are still on the market as a duo appeared. “The Anchor” is composed of 13 new songs that the band has written together after release of this last EP. The opening track of the album is also the title track, followed by a short and somewhat mysterious intermezzo and the catchy tune “Deaf, Dumb, And Blind” that we want to present to you via the accompanying video. The uptempo number “Are You There” dominated by mandolin play also has the necessary portion of hit sensitivity. Ashley Norton and Edward Williams occasionally remind us of the British duo ‘My Darling Clementine’, even though a couple with Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish. In our view, this comparison is mainly due to the songs “Haunted By Me”, “Nephew” and “The Night I Fell For You”. We hear the indie folkmusic that pretends to be ‘Whitherward’ in tracks like “Parallel Universe” and “Teeth”. Despite the fact that the coherence and coherence on “The Anchor” threatens to run a little bit from time to time, there is certainly sufficient material available to convince us that there is a certain potential in ‘Whitherward’. The fact that we have reached the right conclusion, should come to prove this band in the near future with a good successor for this debut album.