Exclusive track premiere of ‘The Fairway’ by Gibson & Toutant, taken from the upcoming album, ‘On the Green,’ out March 22nd 2024 via Sleepy Cat Records.

Durham NC-based lo-fi duo Gibson & Toutant share The Fairway, the third single from their upcoming full length debut ‘On the Green’. With some help from fiddler Joseph Decosimo, Nathan Golub (pedal steel), and Matthew O’Connell (bongos), ‘The Fairway’ places us somewhere in sporting paradise, watching an unnamed pro go through her pre-swing ritual. By the end of the song, this weird hero is “on the green” – is that within putting distance, or something else more metaphorical?

There’s a certain kind of intimacy in the music that Josephine McRobbie and Joe O’Connell (Elephant Micah) make as Gibson and Toutant. Like any two people who spend their lives together, Josephine and Joe have developed the kind of interpersonal telekinesis that’s often phrased as “finishing each other’s sentences.” For ‘On the Green,’ as with their previous EPs on Flannelgraph Records, that connection takes the shape of a game of telephone. One of them passes along a snatch of melody to the other one, who adds lyrics, then passes it back, and so on–but never for too long, lest the spark die. It keeps the music light, intuitive, and, not for nothing, kept within the realm of creative possibility given that there is also a toddler in the house.

<a href="https://gibsonandtoutant.bandcamp.com/album/on-the-green">On The Green by Gibson & Toutant</a>

‘On The Green’ is a record that’s spacious, patient, and a little strange – drawing a line, as the crow flies, between the high lonesome cowboy-folk of the American West and the whisper-soft Welsh post-punk of Young Marble Giants…or, perhaps, a bit of Nancy and Lee and a dash of Ira and Georgia.

Headline photo: Libby Rodenbough

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