Watchhouse, the North Carolina based duo of Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz, have announced a new studio album called Rituals, due out May 30, 2025 via Tiptoe Tiger Music / Thirty Tigers. The collection marks the pair’s first release of all new, original songs since their 2021 self-titled album, which earned praise from Rolling Stone (“pristine acoustic picking collides with hazy, dream-like psychedelia”) Mojo, NPR Music, American Songwriter and more.
Starting over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina, Watchhouse is a grassroots success story that’s been driven by Marlin’s poignant songwriting. With sold-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium, and hundreds of millions of streams, they’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). The duo – now with a family of their own – are two singers and musicians with profound chemistry, performing earnest yet masterfully crafted songs that encompass the unknowable mysteries, existential heartbreak, and communal joys of modern life. The forthcoming album is no exception.
Two Runner
Amid the excitement and ambiguity of a new start, Paige Anderson of Two Runner poses poignant questions on Porchlight, her resolute and tenderhearted new record. Beautiful string arrangements, intimate confessionals, and rollicking hymns for the lost and determined, here is an artist who’s been on the road consistently since early childhood – with persistence and commitment to her craft clearly in no short supply.
Porchlight offers tunes that are warm and steady, relatable nostalgia twinged with the ache of needing to move on. The result aptly links the uncertainty of letting go and simultaneous resolve of someone faced with no other choice. A destiny perhaps sealed from an early age, as Anderson began her touring career in a six-person family bluegrass band from the age of nine. Now nearly a decade into her own music career, she’s seen stages warming up for Sierra Ferrell, Watchhouse and Molly Tuttle.
Although change often comes en masse, it is surreal and jarring to start again. Paige Anderson offers Two Runner as solace and escape for those needing to reset, with sage comfort and kindness from her own accounts, the way all great songwriters do. Porchlight is perhaps best summed up by the chorus in track five, ‘Mocking Crow’: “Wake up tomorrow, there’s no in between – your heart knows what you need.” A reckoning, a stark look in the mirror, hope, and forward movement against all odds.
