Article Contributed by Gratefulweb
Published on 2026-04-21
Photo: Courtesy of Soundkeeper Records
Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine return to their roots in folk minimalism and Gothic Americana with Absence and her sister, out April 30 on Soundkeeper Records.
“One of the best singers in music.” — T Bone Burnett
New and ancient songs of their native New England, the album is informed by the wide palette of a decades-long collaboration that has ranged from Bosnian folk to avant-garde minimalism to cinematic scoring.
The two are perhaps best known for their contributions to films including the Oscar-winning Cold Mountain and cult horror phenomenon The Outwaters, and as founding members of anomalous folk-noise outfit Cordelia's Dad, “the only band to have performed with both Doc Watson and Nirvana.”
But Absence and her sister is something more intimate: a live, unprocessed duo recording, captured by “minimal microphone” recordist Barry Diament with three-dimensional immediacy, in which their collective history distills into something quiet and essential.
The album moves through ancient ballads and original compositions with equal ease. Eriksen, a recipient of the Jean Ritchie Musical Heritage Award and a practitioner of South Indian veena, favors haunting two-chord and two-note structures throughout, occasionally setting aside the instrument entirely for unaccompanied solo balladry.
Irvine’s percussion is spare and deliberate, ranging from understated rhythmic precision to the cinematic colors of bowed and struck metallophones.
The songs are strange and strangely familiar: a childhood dream inhabited by Sea Monkeys, a 19th century community tragedy, a murder weapon made of a sister’s bones, cannibalism narrowly averted.
Echoes of punk-folk, shape-note singing, Bosnian sevdah, and Terry Riley’s In C, the first piece the two ever played together as teenagers, run through the record. Journeying across the boundaries of imagination and reality, they move from sunlit meadows to dark secrets.
The album closes with the Macedonian song “Aber Dojde Donke,” a profound expression of sevdah: love that aches and yearns, yet remains love all the same.
“If the duo's sound is an echo from an ancient time, it is perhaps a time that is only now coming to light. Absence and her sister is a celebration of embodiment and little moments — of space and place — in which the urgency of the musicians' punk and experimental roots finds voice in quietness and restraint.”
— Penelope Cornfield, Slanderville Media Group
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Tracklist
The Jolly Tinker
Every Sound Below
Song of the Lost Hunter
A Tiny Crown
Two Sisters
As She Sank She Rose Again
The Fitchburg Tragedy
Amelia
I Wish the Wars Were All Over
Boston
Aber Dojde Donke
About Tim Eriksen
Tim Eriksen is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist from Amherst, Massachusetts. A specialist in American shape-note singing, New England ballads, and Bosnian folk music, Eriksen’s songs have been performed by Alison Krauss (“Granite Mills”), Joan Baez (“I Wish the Wars Were All Over”), and Will Oldham (“In the Wilderness”).
A Grammy nominee, he has contributed to films including Cold Mountain and The Outwaters. He is a founding member of Cordelia's Dad and the sole recipient of the Jean Ritchie Musical Heritage Award.
About Peter Irvine
Peter Irvine is a percussionist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist with a background spanning orchestral, theatrical, and experimental music. A founding member of Cordelia's Dad, he has collaborated with Eriksen across multiple projects including their Bosnian ensemble Zabe i Babe and the New England magic lantern show Pumpkintown.
When not playing music, he runs a law practice in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts.
