With the release of their new single, “Come Back Tomorrow,” the quirky indie-folk duo, Couldn’t Be Happiers, announce their upcoming sophomore album, Couple(t)s, which will be released in two parts. Couple(t)s Side A will wrap up 2024, with Side B following next year, culminating in the full Couple(t)s album.
Hailing from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, married couple Jodi Hildebran Lee (drums, vocals, harmonica) and Jordan Crosby Lee (guitar, vocals) set out with an ambitious goal: “We were artistically itching to write a cohesive album centered around themes that meant something to us – something to offer hope and joy in a chaotic world,” Jodi recalls. They realized that several themes naturally occurred in their songwriting – folklore, protest, love – and decided to build the album around three songs that exemplified those themes: “Lydia’s Bridge,” a vanishing hitchhiker ghost story originating just outside of Winston-Salem; “Plastic Bag Odyssey,” a romp from the perspective of a grocery store bag; and “Wherever You Go,” which echoes Jordan’s late father’s advice about love.
Written to balance the heaviness of the album’s folklore songs, the upbeat, syncopated pop-folk lead single, “Come Back Tomorrow,” which opens Couple(t)s, captures “that feeling of driving down the road with your first love right after you got your driver’s license,” explains Jodi. “It’s that first little taste of freedom – you’re old enough to drive to the grocery store to pick up eggs for your mom, but you’re not quite an adult. You don’t have any money, and you still have a curfew. So, yes, maybe you don’t have your own car, and maybe you can’t stay out all night with your love, but you can come back tomorrow and fantasize about all the things you will be able to do one day, when you’re old enough.”
Jodi describes the song as capturing the feeling of driving down the road with your first love right after you get your driver’s license. “It’s that first little taste of freedom – you’re old enough to drive to the grocery store to pick up eggs for your mom, but you’re not quite an adult. You don’t have any money and you still have a curfew. So, yes, maybe you don’t have your own car, and maybe you can’t stay out all night with your love, but you can come back tomorrow and fantasize about all the things you will be able to do one day, when you’re old enough.
Named after the duo’s favorite poetic device, Couple(t)s will be released in two halves, with each half consisting of six songs organized thematically into pairs: two love songs, two protest songs, and two folk story songs on each side. “We decided toorganize the album into couplets shortly after we started recording it,” Jordan says. “But the decision to include only songs that could be classified as love songs, protest music, or southern folklore was made over a decade ago. We just didn’t know it.”
“The album themes were right there in front of us,” Jodi says. “We realized the reason we wrote to those themes so often was because those are the things that interest us both as individuals. They are the ties that bind us. So, naturally, those themes are the ones that also should bind our album.”
Although Couple(t)s finds the most shade beneath a folk-rock umbrella, the album pays homage to a wide array of traditions – aNew Orleans, second-line groove drives “Come Back Tomorrow;” a haunting, industrial accompaniment scaffolds “Lydia’s Bridge;” and a handful of bluegrass licks premiere in “King of Austin.” The optimism that community, tradition, and love are equipped to handle the terrifying prospects of climate change, authoritarianism, and other perils of modernity, plus the stunningly assertive lead vocals and harmonies, provide all the gravity needed to keep these diverse sounds in symphonic orbit. The duo sees Couple(t)s as a labor of love, where their individual strengths alone might not have been sufficient to achieve the desired results. Much like the poetic couplet itself, Couldn’t Be Happiers came together to achieve the same goal: a perfectly balanced album.
