The Bittersweets - Goodnight, San Francisco (2008)

Dusk is a bittersweet time of day. There’s no other point in the sun’s arc that captures the imagination quite like it. Sunset slides in between day and night, but it’s not really either—not blindingly bright or thoroughly dark, but draped in deep, surprising hues. Maybe the Nashville-based alt. folk-pop trio the Bittersweets can’t literally splash a sunset across the sky, but they bring the same striking contrast of shadow and luminescence to the ears.

The Bittersweets are Chris Meyers (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Hannah Prater (vocals, guitar) and Steve Bowman (drums). And—to put it simply—they live up to their name. They join together yellows and blues, sunniness and melancholy with evocative song lyrics and lush arrangements, and lift it all to epic heights with transcendent melodies and Prater’s gilded voice.

The chain of events leading up to Goodnight San Francisco reads like a fairy tale. Meyers and Prater discovered their musical kinship in the Bay area after college. The manager of a teenaged musician Meyers was tutoring got the Bittersweets’ demo into the hands of taste-making San Francisco station KFOG, and KFOG’s instant embrace of the Bittersweets built so much buzz that 200 people came out for their very first show—on Superbowl Sunday, no less. By only their third performance, the head of Virt Records was flying in to see them, and their first record deal soon followed. And when the band arrived in Nashville two years later, Compass Records was ready to sign them the moment they breathed a word about starting a new album.

That new album, Goodnight San Francisco, flows seamlessly through eleven gorgeous mood pieces. Lex Price—Mindy Smith producer and sideman—lent his delicate producing touch, and brought in a perfectly sympathetic team of players: steel guitarist Russ Pahl (Miranda Lambert), bassist Dave Jacques (John Prine), guitarist, Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin), cellist David Henry (Ben Folds), keyboard player Jason Lehning (Guster) and others.

Goodnight marks the end of the Bittersweets’ season in San Francisco and the beginning a new one in Nashville with a leaner lineup (the Bittersweets recorded The Life You Always Wanted as a quintet). “Basically we were all going through various personal struggles the last year we were there, even as a band,” says Meyers. “One of the band members went to law school, another one had a baby, both of which are wonderful things.” But that meant shifting from their five-person lineup—which included bassist Daniel Schacht and multi-instrumentalist Jerry Becker—into trio mode, a change that’s ultimately made the Bittersweets even more versatile.

The album’s title track, a slow-burning R&B ballad, captures the bruising and beauty of embarking on a new journey as no one but the Bittersweets can. It eases in with piano and Prater’s breathy lilting and swells into a full-band catharsis, stoked by B-3 organ and an eruptive guitar solo. The lyrics move between past and future, pain and hope. The fine-grained meditation “When the War Is Over” is another song that captures the uncertainty of change with devastating accuracy, picking up the story after the leap’s already been taken. Like many of the songs on Goodnight, there’s a question ringing at its core: “When the war is over/is it ever over?”

Just like sunset, the Bittersweets’ songs have a stirring, not-neatly-sewn-up quality that’s hard to shake. And that’s just the point. Says Meyers, “I think art is at its best when it’s asking questions rather than giving answers.”


Track List:

01 - Wreck
02 - Blue
03 - Is Anyone Safe
04 - Birmingham
05 - 45
06 - My Sweet Love
07 - Bordertown
08 - Tidal Waves
09 - Lies
10 - Goodnight San Francisco
11 - When The War Is Over
12 - Fortunate Wind (Hidden Track)

Download includes front cover