The Cousins Project came about after a chance meeting between Steve Mayone and Kristina Stykos (who are actually second cousins) when Steve was playing in Vermont. Kristina introduced herself, whereupon they found that their respective grandparents were siblings.
An interesting way of hooking up, for sure, and their resulting album was recorded in their home studios. It features thirteen tracks, all of which fall within the folk/country/country rock genre. The opening track is ‘Rescue Me’, written and sung by Steve, who plays guitar and banjo, while Kristina plays bass and mandolin. The track is a country folk style suicide balled: -“Oh, I don’t expect you to always read my mind/ Please don’t feel abandoned when I leave this world behind/ But there are certain places that you’re not allowed/ Oh baby I still love you, when I’m hiding out.”
This is a story of someone who has been worn down by the world, and although he can see his girl’s headlights, he’s hoping that she won’t find him.
After this comes ‘Backway To Victory’: a more rock orientated song which Kristina takes the lead vocal on, and this style certainly suits her voice. In this case, the Victory of the song is a town in Vermont with a population of only 97, and the lyrics reflect the desolate bleakness: - “It’s a cold and wintry day, my love have we lost our way?/ Sun’s up, but it’s coming down. There’s darkness on my mind/ Where the road and the tangled rivers rise, no shelter baby now/ Maybe it’s a fatal flaw, thinking we can see it all/ Beyond this valley, beyond this sky”.
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For me, the best track on the album was ‘Stealing Away’, a lazy blues style track that leans heavily on acoustic guitar. The lyrics are all about someone looking to move on and search for a future and fun: - "I’m stealing away ‘cause the river is high, gone get me a boat and sail to the sky/ Gonna get me a rigger and fly to the sun. Gonna leave all my worries and have me some fun."
In addition to this, there's the excellent titular song ‘Beautiful Blood’ which is a personal memoir of a grandfather who went away to war, and the horrors that this brings. This is a banjo driven country song that really works: - “Medals pinned to his lapel, one for heaven and two for hell/ A tear for every man that fell face down in the mud”.
'Beautiful Blood' is a decent debut. It's a solid album with some excellent ideas and themes. Hopefully, we will hear more from The Cousins Project in the future.
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