After a couple of well received solo albums from Stacey and a more recent live duo disc, this is the first studio album from husband and wife team Stacey and Mark. Being the sister of Steve Earle, you might expect this album to be more ‘country’ than it actually is; in reality this disc is a balanced mix of singer/songwriter, folk and country. Comparisons with other married performers is interesting, they’re not as country as Buddy & Julie Miller, not as poppy as Pete & Maura Kennedy, and not as folky as Robin & Linda Williams - they occupy the ground in the middle of these 3 duos, and elements of them all can be found in this album.
Stacey has a distinctive singing voice, on her first two solo albums it was sweet, fragile and youthful; on this disc it seems to have matured a little, it’s still identifiably Stacey but there’s certainly more depth to her singing, it’s easier to listen to and is likely to appeal to a broader audience. Mark provides the lead vocals on a few songs, as well as some excellent backing vocals, but this is an album that concentrates heavily on Stacey’s vocals.
Instrumentally this is pretty much as you’d expect – lots of acoustic guitar augmented by mandolin, accordion, piano and electric guitar, the difference is the feeling of care an attention in the arrangements, it’s obvious lots of time has been spent getting things to sounding as good as they do.
There are a number of really good songs here, but ‘Me and the Man in the Moon’ and ‘Our World’ highlight the range of material from simple acoustic through to upbeat alt-country.
‘Never Gonna Let You Go’ is a really strong collection, it’s well written and performed, full of great melodies and is easy to enjoy – rather than sitting in a niche of folk or country it takes elements of both and is an album with broad appeal.

£13.49