Sleeping Dogs by Martha's Trouble

After seven years crisscrossing the continent for two albums (Tale of a Foreigner and The Road Ahead), the husband and wife duo still find peace and clarity when the van is moving, when the suitcase is full, and when the next gig awaits.

With the brand new Aisling Records release of their third album, Sleeping Dogs, Rob and Jen Slocumb's steadfast expedition, not to mention their odometer, is turning the next chapter. The album, almost a road diary, celebrates the kind of freedom only offered by the endless yellow lines, the bond of love and the anticipation of arrival (or was that departure?) from their next destination.

"We're a long way from home / But things look brighter from here" (from Brighter from here) proving that the vantage point of the van window can be a poignant seat from which to think, to dream, to fall in love, to write and to discover. These simple love songs, as Rob calls them, are always whetted with a taste for adventure, and delivered with a songbird's delicacy.

Martha's Trouble has been performing together since 1994 when Jen and Rob met in Houston. A rich creative collaboration ensued, not to mention matrimony, and Martha's Trouble embarked on a relentless perennial trans-national tour schedule that sees them performing 180 dates a year in some of the continent's best loved live music rooms.

Jen's spine-tingling vocals, compared by critics to Harriet Wheeler, Natalie Merchant, and Aimee Mann, will hold you captive. Her superb talent will enchant you and convince you that every word is for you. Her voice, rich with experience, conviction, and wonder is what keeps audiences alert and returning to hear Martha's Trouble. Add to this Rob's elegant and patterned acoustic arrangements and a live experience that transcends expectations and you have just a few of the many reasons why Martha's Trouble is being heralded by critics as a duo to watch.

Sleeping Dogs is filled with journeys of the heart and concrete, or maybe it's asphalt, journeys of the body. "We're a hundred miles to Charleston / There's still several more to go" sings Jen, at once happy to be traveling and seemingly longing for arrival. It's never clear however, with hundreds of miles both in front and behind, whether the delight is in reaching each new Charleston, or like some ancient troubadour the joy is found as much in bringing songs to fresh ears as it is continuing to the next Charleston, or Toronto, or Nashville, or Buffalo, or....

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