Listen to the Watston Twins

Two strikingly tall, strikingly dark-haired girls with strikingly identical features step into the spotlight like the sort of mirage you might encounter if you were seeing double. “Hello, we’re the Watson Twins,” they announce in perfect unison. “And we always speak at the same time.” It’s not a trick: the symbiosis between the 6ft identical twins is remarkable, whether singing their sweet harmonies, summarising their life story over a glass of wine, or simply avoiding the ceiling of a low stage. “It’s hard being Amazons,” sighs Leigh, as she eyes the low-hung stack of speakers inches above her head — and Chandra instinctively stoops to look up.

The duo first came to attention when they shared the billing with Rilo Kiley’s vocalist Jenny Lewis on her 2006 solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, and spent the following year touring the world with her. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response, Leigh and Chandra recorded a mini-album, Southern Manners, and have just released their first full-length collection, Fire Songs. Their self-penned songs strike a melancholic yet optimistic mood around themes of love lost, shared and, just occasionally, requited. The eternal search for love is mapped out in a series of gently melodic tracks infused with notes of folk, country, blues and soul.

That’s the mix of influences that inspired the Watson girls as they grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, home to bands as diverse as Slint, My Morning Jacket and Palace Brothers, as well as Muhammad Ali and Hunter S Thompson. They may have spent the past decade living among the thriving musicians’ community of Silver Lake in Los Angeles, but the Watsons retain enough of their roots to stage an annual hoedown to mark the Kentucky Derby, America’s biggest horse race.

Hospitality, as much as music and food, is part of their Southern heritage. They grew up with their mother and older sister,singing in church, and with entertainment running in their ancestry. “Our grandmother and her sister used to sing together on the front porch, and our great-great-uncle had a circus,” says Chandra. “Our great-great- aunts were in the circus as hula girls in grass skirts, and they both had question marks tattooed on their pinkies, which I thought was the coolest thing.”

Leigh and Chandra never ran away to join the circus, but began performing in public at a tender age. “We started singing in church when we were eight or nine,” reveals Leigh, who helpfully wears a ring with her name spelt out on it, to help distinguish her from her identical sister. “On Wednesdays, we had a full electric band and would do covers like Carry on Wayward Son by Kansas.”

Not that they had religious leanings. “It was the singing that took us to church,” says Leigh. “Our mother’s a spiritual person but not a religious person. She wanted us to have morals and a spirituality; she’s a hippie in the best way.” Chandra adds: “It was a great social outlet up until 17, when I started getting involved with alternative culture and going to shows. My mind started opening up and I realised church wasn’t the only avenue to be able to sing and play music.”

Church began to take a back seat as the girls discovered Louisville’s underground scene. “We found that there were friends our age playing punk-rock music that was really thought-provoking and interesting,” says Leigh. “Most of these people had ideas that they wanted to talk about. It was interesting at that age to be around people who were rebelling, really pushing the boundaries.”

Their own songwriting style has more to do with their formative influences. At home, they would listen to their mother’s records by singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Carole King, Carly Simon and Cat Stevens, as well as the country legends Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris. The girls absorbed it all, and, with their intuitive flair for singing together, were drawn to the secular harmonies of Brian Wilson, Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as well as girl groups the Bangles and the Go-Go’s. They also had an R&B phase, enjoying Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston. You can detect all those influences in their music, which ranges from country ballads such as Lady Love Me, with its plangent steel guitar, to the slow soulful shuffle of Map to Where You Are, while Leigh’s Only You is an old-fashioned torch song full of emotion and drama, and an unexpected cover of the Cure turns Just Like Heaven into an aching lament for a lost love.

It is recorded with, and produced entirely on, analogue equipment, by a pair of trusted collaborators: Chandra’s husband, Russ Pollard (guitar and keyboards), and former Slydell guitarist J Soda (guitar and drums). The Watsons not only sing like angels but also display a way with words that suggests a love of Southern gothic literature. “You’ve got angel eyes but you’ve got devil's blood,” sings Chandra on the country ballad Old Ways, while Leigh introduces Map to Where You Are with the sexily sinister line: “There’s frost on your jacket and blood on your lip.” Yet it was not literature but art and theatre that the sisters chose to study at university in neighbouring Indiana: a course that included a six-month placement at its sister college in England, amid the dreaming spires of — Grantham. Fortunately, they were able to travel further afield. “We did what every American does in Europe, making day trips to Bath and Brighton and the Lake District.”

Bitten by the travel bug, they packed their pick-up truck with supplies for six months: “Two sleeping bags and a guitar.” At the end of the road trip, they took up an offer to share a friend’s place in Los Angeles. Accustomed to being mocked for their Southern roots (“Being from Kentucky makes a lot of people think you’re hillbillies,” sighs Leigh), they found a natural home in the bohemian environs of Silver Lake, where they supported themselves — and their singing — by working in shops, cafes and bars.

Chandra took a job in video production at a major record label. “It was really important for us to learn about how the industry worked,” she says. “At that point, we had started doing music and I felt like I didn’t know anything about the business. I saw my friends going into the industry and making mistakes and getting screwed over, and I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be naive any more, so I spent a few years learning what ‘recoupable’ means.”

That must have been useful when they released their mini-album, off the back of the Jenny Lewis album and tour, on their own label. To this day, the CDs are sent out by their mother, who also does their book-keeping, back in Louisville. The new album, however, is released through Vanguard, a historic label that they chose for its heritage, as home to many of the folk and blues greats during the 1960s. With their profile sure to grow, they could not be in better company.

Fire Songs is out now

Explore Music

• Festivals

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette