Gavin B.

Sister Acts

There have been quite a few successful brother acts in pop music over the years most notably the Beach Boys, the Allman Brothers Band, the Kinks and Oasis. Successful sister acts are rarer, especially in rock music. The three "sister acts" I've chosen for today's profile are more of the folk/roots music variety. My choices reflect my own appreciation for intricate chorale arrangements which I learned singing in a Catholic school children's choir until my singing voice changed into a one octave frog croak at age 13.


First Aid Kit



First Aid Kit- Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Fleet Foxes cover)
First Aid Kit sounds very much like a roots Americana group and I was taken aback when I discovered they are in fact Swedish. The duo is comprised of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, whose vocal harmonies and woodsy, folk-influenced songwriting take influence from the likes of Fleet Foxes and Joanna Newsom. Hailing from suburban Enskede Sweden, the siblings began composing songs as young teenagers in 2007. The home-recorded "Tangerine" enjoyed airplay on Swedish radio later that summer, and the debut EP Drunken Trees helped expand the girls' audience upon its release in April 2008.



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The Roches




The Roches- Hammond Song
Since the early Eighties the Roche sisters have been the gold standard of precision harmony singing. The older sisters Terre and Maggie began by busking in the streets of New York as children, singing Christmas carols to passersby. Paul Simon heard them and used the pair of girl wonders as backup singers on his album There Goes Rhymin' Simon. After there debut album flopped in the mid Seventies, Terre and Maggie debated leaving the music business.

In the late 70s, the youngest Roche sister, Suzzy joined the band and the Roches began an unorthodox career path for a folk music group. The Roches began playing some of the New York's downtown punk clubs and built a cult following and drew the interest of several record labels.

For their sophomore 1979 album, the Roches hired on King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp as producer, who was a big fan of their music. On their second album the Roches were backed by members of Television and the Patti Smith Group. Subsequently the Roches made inroads to a demographic base of younger fans who normally listened to Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads.

Since their early career success the Roches have periodically gone on hiatus, or disbanded, and done solo projects but they've always reunited every few years to record again.




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The Pierces



The Pierces- Secret
The Pierces, Allison and Catherine, are a sister act from Birmingham Alabama. Like the Roches they've had crossover success with both the roots Americana and the adult alternative music scenes. In 1999 The Pierces were marketed as a country group but they languished in Nashville for lack support from their label, Sony. Their 2000 debut album bombed and many less determined musicians would have called it a career, after Sony promptly dismissed the Pierces from the label.

Instead of breaking up, in the mid 2000s Allison and Catherine moved to New York took day jobs and reinvented themselves as darker, edgier group and built a following among indie music fans. Even if they haven't become international mega stars the Pieces have developed as solid fan base and they've quit their day jobs to become a very successful headline act at smaller club venues.



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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt