Album Review: The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars

[emma]

The cover art to The Civil Wars’ self-titled sophomore album depicts a vast, billowing plume of black smoke, suggestive, perhaps, of a smoldering relationship that eventually ignited and left some unpleasant fallout. Right now, despite this release, the vehicle of singer-songwriters John Paul White and Joy Williams, The Civil Wars, is no more. The record was put together late in 2012, seemingly just as the duo called time midway through a European tour, citing “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition” as reasons for the “hiatus.”


read more here consequenceofsound.net/2013/07/album-review-the-civil-wars-the-civil-wars/

[emma]

another review

Pre-release campaigns rarely come as enticing as that preceding the Civil Wars' eponymous second album. In November, the duo announced they were splitting up, due to "internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition". People acted surprised: the band were generally held to be on the cusp of huge global success.



www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/01/the-civil-wars-civil-wars-review

[emma]

Review: The Civil Wars' inner battle can be heard on latest album

After the Civil Wars broke out with their 2011 debut, Joy Williams and John Paul White repeatedly insisted that the lovelorn lyrics on "Barton Hollow" weren't about them. Each was happily married to another person, they said; the intense romantic bond they conjured onstage was strictly an artistic creation, one that led to more than a half-million album sales, two Grammy Awards and superstar fans such as Adele and Taylor Swift, who recruited the folk-rock duo for a hit collaboration on the "Hunger Games" soundtrack.

Despite (or because of) all that success, the Civil Wars began to unravel. Last November, Williams and White abruptly called off a European tour, citing "internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition." Now Williams says the two singers, who met while trying to write songs for the Nashville star machine, aren't even speaking to each other — which makes it hard not to hear the recriminations on the duo's new disc as pertaining once again to the real-life relationship at its core.


more here www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-civil-wars-pop-review-20130806,0,6039594.story

[emma]

Most of the ink spilled over the Civil Wars since last November has been in reaction to a note they posted on their Facebook page. Written after an abrupt cancellation of the remainder of their tour dates, the post was essentially a Dear John letter for the band. They wouldn’t be playing anymore in 2012, the note said, a sudden disbanding they owed to “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition.”

more here www.heyreverb.com/blog/2013/08/05/album-review-the-civil-wars-the-civil-wars/74421/