This seven-song EP emerged from Charlie Sexton and Shannon McNally’s tour last fall, when the two would play a few songs together each night. Recorded at Sexton’s home studio in Austin, Southside Sessions emphasizes the duo’s shared folk/country roots. Everything is quiet and lyric-driven, and the sparse sound makes the performances sound offhanded, as if Sexton and McNally were sitting on a porch at a country house, playing acoustic guitars and harmonizing when they can remember the words. More attentive listenings reveal clever production decisions that suggest the EP was more deliberate. The lengthy sustain on the piano, for example, gives McNally’s version of Jesse Winchester’s “Biloxi” a ruminative quality, as if she’s trying to think her way through a haze that keeps threatening to break.

 

Southside Sessions is a working vacation as much as anything else, and it documents a musical friendship, which is somehow reassuring. It also puts McNally in yet another musical context, and once again she finds a way to connect to it and shine.