It’s undeniably true that musicians are a product of their environment; take Black Sabbath and their Luftwaffe-scarred surroundings or MC5 and their blue-collar roots, scratch the surface and you’ll find the tendrils of their inner being. A similar thing applies to The Kearns Family, a pair of musicians who draw inspiration from their location in the Mojave Desert to produce a sound that’s equal parts stark and unsettling. As the title Together And Alone suggests, there’s a duality running their latest album that will reward deep excavation and reveal hidden delights on successive spins.

‘Dust’ is not a typical album opener, but then again, The Kearns Family are not your typical band. With a sparse and crystalline sound, an expansive sonic vista is created where tumble weeds roll across the desert floor and Pat Kearns’ vocals wisp around the listener like a warm breeze. Meagre it may be, but every note serves a purpose; there’s not an excess ounce of fat here, the bones peak through the flesh and that means that Pat’s oak-aged, whiskey-croak rings out in a huge cavernous space and highlights the sense of isolation that the song conveys. Rarely have vocals and instruments been combined with such panache as on Together And Alone, and the results have rarely been so spectacular. There’s a strong visual component to tracks such as ‘Bandito’ which place strong images in the mind’s eye. It’s a sense of time and place that renders the characters in ‘Bandito’ three-dimensional and gives the album a cinematic quality, you feel that any of these songs would make a perfect soundtrack to some über cool film (preferably by David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino).

The Kearns Family is an equal partnership, yet Together And Alone finds Pat stepping to the fore, not as a way to hog the spotlight but simply because that’s what the project requires. Susan still sings occasionally and adds some neat instrumentation, yet it’s primarily Pat’s vocals (and songwriting) that becomes the totem around which the album revolves. Case in point being ‘You Got No Claim To The Mine’. Pat’s voice takes on different forms, it’s almost separate people singing and that plays into the characterisation I alluded to earlier; it’s a duality that suggests an unstable personality, which perfectly plays into the songs theme (and album title) and it makes the stories within the songs far more believable. Together And Alone might be an album that speaks of dislocation, yet musically both Pat and Susan are on the same page and act as a unified to whole to deliver dark and discombobulating soundscapes (but in the nicest possible way, of course).

Together And Alone is an album that has absorbed its surroundings, its hues are burnt gold and bruised coloured whilst its sound is stark and the two combine in intriguing ways. This is an album that is impervious to fads and trends and as such is not an album of our time, but of all times.

• Together And Alone is released on 31st January 2025 (available here).

Track List:

1. The Dust
2. Bandito
3. The Old Days
4. You Got No Claim To The Mine
5. Daytime Moon
6. The Funny Thing About Keeping Moving
7. Charlie
8. That’s Not What I Thought It Would Be
9. Love Will Win In The End
10. Killing The Blues
11. When The Nights Are Cold

Vinyl Version:

Side 1:

1. The Dust
2. Bandito
3. The Old Days
4. You Got No Claim To The Mine
5. Daytime Moon

Side 2:

1. The Funny Thing About Keeping Moving
2. Charlie
3. That’s Not What I Thought It Would Be
4. Love Will Win In The End