SECOND DAY OF SPRING (DINKED EDITION) | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Companion, At just 23-years-old, identical twin sisters Sophia and Jo Babb had faced a decade of darkness. Then, as Companion, they built lighthouses. With their debut album Second Day of Spring, the duo arrive at the start of a blooming new season, holding a work that softly glows with a sincerity, vulnerability, and hopefulness that they fought hard to find along their way. "A lot of this album is rooted in healing from grief and familial hurt," says Sophia. "There are songs about marriage and healing from mistrust. Family ties that have been broken." Second Day of Spring introduces two brilliant songwriters and mesmerizing singers as they share their stories with gazes at once light and weighted, offering listeners comfort in despairing corners.  The now Fort Collins, CO-based sisters were raised and homeschooled on nine farmland acres just outside of Norman, OK. Their lives changed abruptly at 13 when their father, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, took his own life. "Mental health is such an undervalued issue that's not talked about enough - so we talk about it through our music," says Sophia. The loss pushed the girls to write. Sourcing inspiration from their shared love of artists like Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, and Samantha Crain, the duo began to form their own style through a freedom of thought, expression, and directness that can only result from such an intimate, symbiotic bond - even if they had their creative differences at times. "Writing came pretty naturally, but as siblings, there was friction," Jo says. "Our closeness as twins allows for a sometimes brutal honesty that other collaborators might shy away from." The tension made the songs even better. On the album, a gradual march toward openness, possibility, and warmth is underway, tracing Sophia and Jo's real-world path of healing. "It's been 10 years since our dad died, and it's taken 10 years for us to get to this point where we feel like trusting," Sophia says. "We don't feel drawn toward chaos or constant darkness, whether it was self-manufactured darkness or just bad luck. We both feel better. We're not unhappy every day anymore. And this album is like that next step toward this new phase of life." Hope peeks through early songs on Second Day of Spring, like grass growing up through sidewalk cracks, before sprawling out into lush meadows by the album's end. Produced and recorded in a Colorado barn by a close-knit, all female team, the process of creating Second Day of Spring was as heartfelt as the album itself. Acoustic guitar is a constant companion to the twins' blood harmonies, joined at turns by standout instrumentation ranging from viola to organelle to trumpet to piano, and even the earthly, tender sounds of the natural beauty that surrounded them.