Chandra Watson talks like a satisfied woman these days.
Her alt-country duo the Watson Twins released its first proper album this June -- a record a long, long time coming since Louisville-raised sisters Chandra and Leigh left for Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.
Called "Fire Songs," the album shows off the twins' harmonizing ways with songs both country and pop. The sisters toured through the summer with Brooklyn singer-songwriter Tim Fite and played a couple of West Coast dates with Nada Surf, and on this particular day it was time to catch their breath before this fall's big tour-and-media push begins in September.
"We look at this as something that will be growing over the next couple of months," she said. "There are a lot of people who don't know about us yet, or who just know us because of Jenny Lewis."
The reviews for "Fire Songs" have been dyslexic: Spin liked the singing but was tepid on the songwriting, while Pitchfork called the album "pretty musically solid" but found the singing unmemorable.
True, the album isn't adventurous -- not a complaint, mind you -- but the Watsons have solid, interesting voices that mix beautifully. The duo first gained wide notice in 2006, when they teamed with Lewis, the lead singer for the popular indie-rock band Rilo Kiley, to make "Rabbit Fur Coat," an album born out of a friendship the twins made with Rilo Kiley while singing backup in the L.A. band Slydell.
Though their music and affiliations are clearly the product of L.A.'s über-hip Silver Lake indie-rock scene, the twins got their start in Louisville, which they still consider their hometown -- well, J-town, specifically -- after more than a decade away.
"It's still home," Chandra said. "That's where mom lives, where my grandma and my aunt lives. And we still have a lot of friends there, too. In Louisville, we had a lot of friends who were in bands. You see your friends play music, and we sang in the church choir."
The '90s Louisville bands that inspired Chandra and Leigh to make music were the antithesis of Rilo Kiley -- political Endpoint, noisy Crain, emotionally charged Falling Forward. After college at the University of Evansville, the Watsons departed the Midwest for what was intended as a simple road trip to see friends who'd dispersed west of the Mississippi River.
Somewhere along the way, the Watsons decided to settle down in L.A. and fell into that city's music scene in the mid-'90s, where they toiled until the Lewis album shot them into national regard.
"We'd never before been west of Kansas City," Chandra said. "We just took off across the country."
If this fall goes as planned, the Watson Twins and their "Fire Songs" could just take off across the country, too.
