Love and War - Civil Wars

The new Civil Wars album is on its way! The duo ceased touring in November of last year, due to irreconcilable differences, even though their choice of name and songwriting is inspired by such stuff of life, or as Joy puts it ' I was driving around town looking at the Civil War monuments, I thought about all the wars that we each face'. Probably my favourite song from their first album, Barton Hollow, is Poison and Wine, illustrating beautifully the way love is  life's biggest oxymoron. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfzRlcnq_c0

I've been giving this some thought after watching the excellent tv drama about Taylor and Burton, played by Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic West, showing the two archetypal stars who loved each other but couldn't live with each other, as if their personalities were too large to be contained in such a restraining thing as a relationship.
The Civil Wars aren't alone of course in writing about the pains and paradoxes of love, or as Stephen Stills sang,
'there's a rose in the fisted glove, and the eagle flies with the dove, and if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with'.
 There's a theory nowadays that as we live so much longer, it's harder to stay with the one partner, through the many decades of change, but obviously there is all manner of other factors involved. In the  middle ages, though life may have been  'nasty, brutish and short',  at least the ideal of courtly love maintained that you could adore someone from a distance without feeling compelled to act on this passion, other than by jousting or throwing the odd handkerchief. Whereas our modern compulsion to react to whatever our hearts desire may be, gets us into all kinds of tangles. We feel and therefore we act - yet it wasn't always so.
So back to The Civil Wars and rumours that their 'differences' were that after years of saying that they were merely a professional  duo, they had eventually had a short relationship, which has been inspiration for the songs of the latest album. The cynical among us could suspect that this is merely a very canny marketing ploy, but we'll probably love the album anyway. Whatever their romantic status, the fact remains that their voices meld so perfectly together that like the best duos they are greater than the sum of their parts, deserving of the many accolades and awards already bestowed.
http://thecivilwars.com/