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The Castellows – A Little Goes A Long Way EP

Florian Buechting Media Review No Comments

The Castellows - A Little Goes A Long Way

The Castellows - A Little Goes A Long Way
3.9

Rating

 3.9/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Great vocals
  • Very good storytelling

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Some rather similar songs
  • Not at the trio's full potential

It feels like the all-female neotraditional country music trio The Castellows are skyrocketing the music scene of their genre. The got some fame with cover music videos published in 2022 and now are followed by 1.4 million people on Instagram and roughly half a million users at TikTok. With A Little Goes A Long Way, they are releasing their debut EP on 9th February 2024. I was absolutely curious about the young ladies.

 

The Castellows – About The Artists

The Castellows are a trio consisting of three sisters, Eleanor, Lily and Powell Balkcom. Ellie and Powell are triplets, but their brother is not part of the band. Youngest band member Ellie has been born some 18 months thereafter. The Balkcom family is originally from Georgetown in Georgia, right at the state border to Alabama. However, they moved to Nashville in 2023.

 

The Castellows – A Little Goes A Long Way – Track by Track

The seven songs EP lasts 22 minutes.

1. A Little Goes A Long Way

Nashville grants us a rather rare experience with this debut EP: four songs have not yet been released. Many debut releases just come with one or two not yet featured tracks. The more I love this opening triple of songs. A Little Goes A Long Way thereby is a rather typical The Castellows song. A mid-tempo country song, which is not too progressive and not too traditional. The key profit are the angelic voices of the three sisters, which sing right into the heart of the country music lover. Good opener.

2. Heartline Hill

The instruments are a bit more playful and the rhythm is a bit quicker in Heartline Hill – and it works. There are no special features, but nonetheless songs like this second one feel special. They make you smile and move to its beat. Overall, this leads to a really nice country-pop track.

3. The Part Where You Break My Heart

The third song comes with a strong and catching chorus. The remaining track easily leads to some smiles on the listeners’ side. The song underlines the quality of the team around the three young ladies. Even though the song feels a bit of familiar.

4. No. 7 Road

The Castellows present their already released tracks towards the end of the EP. No. 7 Road takes the vanguard position and thereby especially pleases the more traditional country music listener. I think that this song makes more use of the multi-vocal setup of the trio than its peers in this EP.

5. Cowboy Kind of Love

Cowboy Kind of Love is the last new song on the album. The song goes more back to the “one narrating voice in the stanzas” strategy and majorly works with the three vocalists in the chorus. I struggle with this song a bit. It is a good one – but does it add too much character, some new style to the EP? I am uncertain.

6. Hurricane

Hurricane has been the only The Castellows track so far, which made more than one million streams on Spotify. The band still has more followers on Instagram only than listeners to this rather slow song, which comes with a nice dramatic plot and great lyrics. A very good song.

7. I Know It’ll Never End

Just regarding the title, it is a weird statement that you close your EP with I Know It’ll Never End, ain’t it. The chucker-out relies on similar principles like Hurricane and comes with a good plot, a nice story and three good singers. It works nicely – but again, I would love to have a bit more different flavors in here.

 

The Castellows – A Little Goes A Long Way – Spotify

Here is the EP on Spotify:

 

The Castellows – A Little Goes A Long Way – My View

Good music has nothing to do with Maths – but for this review, I just had to do it: The Castellows have 1.4 million followers on Instagram, but only 1.05m people listened to Hurricane on Spotify. I compared this quota with other female country artists. If I take Lauren Jenkins, for example, the same comparision results in that the Spotify stat for her most popular is some 28 times higher than the number of her followers. For Lindsay Ell, this factor is even 125, Sarah Darling is about 70.

Why do I put that in here? I am a bit of afraid that these ladies are not liked for their music. This is a shame. A Little Goes A Long Way is maybe no masterpiece, but it is a pretty nice listen. And the vocal performance on the EP is very good as well. I just keep my fingers crossed that the marketing of these ladies is not just focused on whatever makes them popular. They have a lot of potential – and deserve to release a really good debut album one day. .

Favorite Song: Hurricane

 

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