Whatever conflicts exist, the two still sing together as compellingly as ever, including on covers of the Carter Family's 'Tell Mama' and Smashing Pumpkins' 'Disarm' - the latter cleverly sequenced right after 'Oh Henry' and its subtle murder threat that makes its 'the killer in me is the killer in you' refrain a bit more resonant. ' There are expressions of 'I wish I'd never ever seen your face,' 'I wish you were the one that got away' and 'I want to leave you/I want to lose us,' while the raw and rocking (by Civil War standards) 'I Had Me a Girl' seems to make direct allusions to those 'differences of ambition.' Listeners will having a field day digging for meaning in these songs - though, in the case of 'Sacred Heart,' only if they understand French - while Joy Williams and John Paul White seem content to let them hang out there for interpretation. That's been the tale of the Civil Wars, the duo that just nine months ago announced an open-ended hiatus due to 'internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition.' Not surprisingly, there's plenty of disagreement, ambivalence and ambiguity in the songs on this second album, with no sense of resolution and a general, open-ended message that 'we love each other, but.

Here's a formula you don't see very often: release an album (2011's 'Barton Hollow'), win some Grammy Awards, hook up with the top-selling singer of the day ( Taylor Swift), break up - and then release a second album.

Walking papers sunyata