+ read more

Like many who forge their own path, the group started with seemingly inauspicious beginnings. While sisters Amelia, Rachel and Rosalie were living and working as teachers in various international locales, they’d get together occasionally to play cover tunes at family weddings or in low-key performance settings. By 2016, all three had centralized in Chattanooga and were gigging regularly, still playing cover songs but discovering that their individual musical journeys were gelling with their inherent familial harmony for something unique. The band’s repertoire of well-loved pop, R&B and ‘90s boy band songs would morph into new forms when approached through left-of-center arrangements for stand up bass, accordion, banjo, ukulele and a drum set up they lovingly referred to as “trash percussion.” Chattanooga’s supportive local music scene served as an incredible incubator, and within a few years they were applying this distinctive approach to songs of their own. When the band played the Timber Roots festival in Lookout Mountain, Georgia in late summer of 2019, they met Strolling Bones label head George Fontaine, who had already heard positive buzzings about the band from friends in Chattanooga with good ears. Through George, Call Me Spinster would eventually be introduced to producer Drew Vandenberg (of Montreal, Toro y Moi,) who would work with them to create their first EP of original music.

The band decamped to Athens, Georgia to work with Vandenberg at the vaunted studios of Chase Park Transductions. The studio turned into a creative playground, and long days spun on into 3AM nights of experimenting with overdubs and last-minute mixing choices that totally reshaped the songs. A major transformation came with the decision to branch out from the merry-go-round instrumentation of the band’s live set, bringing in session players to fill out arrangements that could be sometimes raw or skeletal in the club. After a week of work, time was up and the band returned home with the recordings still in progress, making plans to come back soon and finish up in person.

COVID-19 complicated those plans significantly, and the music took yet another unexpected turn with Call Me Spinster completing unfinished vocal tracking, overdubs and in some cases full songs on their own, with help in the form of video chat recording tutorials from their producer. Accordion tracks were laid down in the bathroom, boyfriends were enlisted to help out with handclaps, sometimes takes would be marred by the dog audibly snoring in the background and have to be re-recorded. This crash course in home recording gave way to an even more complex remote mixing process, the entire thing a million miles away from the standard cut-and-dry album making experience.

The five songs that emerged when the dust cleared are further evidence of a group that never takes the most traveled route. “Here You Are” filters daydreamy Debbie Harry energy through a bouncy girl group chord progression, opening up into walls of unexpected slide guitar and vocal harmonies. There are echoes of Call Me Spinster’s affinity for radio R&B covers on the slinky, electric piano-driven “Stop Wait,” fading quickly into reverb-heavy atmospheres and wistful melodies on the achingly beautiful “Long Hard Day.” With these songs, Call Me Spinster manages to illuminate various keystones of their sound as they explore new impulses, the entire EP cohering around their steadfast musical vision, intricate personalities, and the type of telepathic musical connection that only siblings can share. It’s a brief introduction to their wide-reaching but somehow singular sound, and a stellar starting point for becoming acquainted with a band that’s truly unlike any other.