EDWINA & DEKO - ALBUM REVIEW

Edwina & Deko - Berlin Seasons (Monkey Records) 
Edwina & Deko - Berlin Seasons

An Italian and an Australian walk in to a German language class in Berlin and bond over a love of Lennon and McCartney which leads them to form an acoustic folk duo and release an album together. It's no joke. This is the story of how Edwina & Deko came to be and the very good reason that their album is called 'Berlin Seasons'. 'Innocent' is the opening song and it is a real 60s folk protest song complete with eerie whistling and stern lyrics about battles being lost and won. 'Berlin' is more of a soft love letter to the duo's adoptive city while 'Romeo' is a more jaunty, almost busked affair with a tale of ill-conceived love and matriarchal advice woven through the lyrics. Edwina & Deko are not the most technically astounding musicians or singers but what they excel at is the craft of songwriting and storytelling, part of the process that is so often overlooked these days. 'Home' and 'Sunday' are great examples of this ability as the duo share what can only be stories from their past.

The delightfully delicate strum of 'Leo' sees Deko take the lead on the vocals for a change and the sombre tone of autumn in a bleak German city is infused throughout this tune. The smooth, comforting tones of Edwina's vocal style is brought to the fore on 'Black Friday' while 'Josephine' is more of a jaunty tale of infatuation and innocent love. This is a raw collection of songs with very little production but that's the way acoustic folk songs ought to be presented so as not to detract from the important lyrical content that takes more prominence as shown in the story telling beauty of 'On My Way'. As the duo bring proceedings to a close with 'Finally Flow' there is a gentle but melancholy calm that falls over the music which makes me want to stare in to the middle distance of a rainy day but it's all blue skies and sun here so I'll save that one for another day. A fine collection of songs indeed and I would urge you to make a big mug of tea before spending some time getting wrapped up in the stories contained within each one of them.


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