Court Yard Hounds are sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire — two-thirds of the Dixie Chicks, not a bad place to start for a country duo. Toss in plentiful two-part harmonies, a few ringing love songs ("The Coast"), the odd woodsy Band-like ballad ("See You in the Spring," with Jakob Dylan) and some gorgeous guitar-and-violin folk songs ("April's Love"), and it adds up to one of the year's better country records. Natalie Maines' feistiness is missed, but Robison, who wrote most of the songs, has a way with a hook — and those harmonies make even the weepiest weepers go down smooth.

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”