In their sophomore album, Texan duet Folk Uke deliver their customary twee sound and influences from their Southern homeland.
It’s a record filled with songs of love lost mixed with twangy guitar, light ukulele, and harmonising vocals.
While intentions and delivery are quite cute, Reincarnation lacks the spark of their debut self-titled LP, which featured entertaining, quirky and irreverent tracks like “Shit Makes The Flowers Grow,” “Knock Me Up” and “Motherf*cker Got F*cked up.”
Instead, Reincarnation is like a folked-up Best Coast album, filled with the sound of girly complaints: having nobody in “Nobody Blues,” feeling “Worthless” in a Mike Stinson cover, and missing that special someone in “I Miss My Boyfriend,” a track that features some humorous spoken word from Waylon Albright “Shooter” Jennings.
Along with repetitive strumming, the lilting quality of country music, and the girls’ nasal vocals, the record gets a little whiny and daresay annoying.
To its credit though, the album has a nice community feel to it, with Cathy Guthrie and Amy Nelson’s famous folk-activist fathers Arlo and Willie joining in on guitar.
Along with Shooter Jennings’ cameo, it’s easy to imagine all of them sitting together in a circle around a campfire, guitar and ukuleles in hand, crooning the night away.
It’s a nice image, but not enough to lift what is otherwise a fairly lacklustre record.
