On their second album, we hear Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes honing in on the sound of their award-winning project, embracing a new level of self-assurance that mixes in fluidly with the waves of striking emotion the flow through the album. While 2016’s Staring at the Starry Ceiling had Charm of Finches playing with quaint indie-folk, Your Company finds the sisters stretching out further, fully immersing themselves in their haunting dream-folk sound, and the result is truly captivating.

Despite the arrangements remaining relatively sparse, Your Company still manages to feel especially grandiose. Set to a backdrop of gentle guitar or piano work, strings swell to create a series of soundscapes that blossom open, as the sisters crystalline voices sit up close and personal, somehow keeping the tracks’ grounded while creating the sense that they could just drift away.

This mood refuses to disappear throughout Your Company - from the stunning opening track ‘The Bridge’, with its swirl of immaculate harmonies and otherworldly undertones, to the poignantly tender ‘Paint Me A Picture’, and through to the closing moments of the lilting title track, its stark banjo pairing surprisingly easily with the sister’s delicate voices.

Profoundly intimate, the album shines in its ability to feel as immersive as it does exhaustingly emotional - rarely does melancholia feel this mesmerising. To learn a little more about Your Company, Charm of Finches talked us through each track on the album.

The Bridge

We were walking across a bridge when we came upon a group of young people, probably not much older than us, who were obviously grieving. There were flowers and beer cans hanging from the bridge, and we found out their friend had jumped off the bridge during a party and didn't make it. 
This stayed with us all day. As a young person, how do you deal with losing someone who was so young and had their whole life ahead of them? That evening we wrote this song.

Lies

We wrote this song about how social media can effect your mood and self esteem because people often only present their most perfect, happy and unblemished lives online. This can sometimes make you feel like the only flawed person in the world.

Fish in the Sea

‘Fish in the Sea’ explores dysfunctional behaviours we’ve seen in others but can maybe manifest in all of us at some point. We reflect on a certain attitude of searching for love that sees people as almost disposable and replaceable. It can result in overlooking how someone is unique in their quirks and flaws, as well as their obvious virtues. We layered up our violin and cello parts to make it really emotional at the end.

Her Quiet Footsteps

A lot of the songs on this album came out of quite a difficult time in our lives when our friend passed away at the age of 14. Ivy has been writing a lot of songs as a process of grieving and healing over the last three years and this is probably the most direct and intimate of those songs. This song was written on the piano. We made the cello and violin parts interweave with layers and layers of vocal harmonies.

Paint Me a Picture

‘Paint Me a Picture’ is an honest reflection on the uncertainty of the personal moral compass and how when you hear and empathise with an alternative perspective from your own this can make you feel like a stranger to yourself and what you had believed.

In the Gloaming

This is a song that came out of grieving for our friend. We started the process of writing it by opening to a random page of Banana Yoshimoto’s beautiful novel about love and grief called Kitchen and choosing our favourite words and phrases as a gateway into the song. The song has banjo, but it's a folky approach being lightly strummed. 

I’ll Wonder

‘I’ll Wonder’ is a bit of a passive aggressive song, but also a melancholic breakup song full of jealous musings.

Slip Like Water

This song is very exciting production wise. We’ve created a shimmering mist that lies underneath the song that gives it a bright feeling, like sun streaming through a window that serves to bring a lightness to the song’s themes. This is one of those songs that we think people might take different things from but stems from feeling a lack of control of how you feel when overcome with feelings of grief and depression. We were inspired by the gorgeous close harmonies of traditional Bulgarian folk singing.

Where Do the Ducks Go?

I started writing this song after reading ‘Catcher in the Rye’ by J D Salinger, inspired by Holden Caulfield's musing on where the ducks go when it’s winter and the lake is frozen over, and whether the fish get frozen in the ice. We actually wrote the melody for the verse a couple of years ago, but only finished it a couple of months ago. 

Good Luck on Your Own

We wrote this song in one afternoon with our friend Cian Bennet, who is a songwriter, trumpet player and fellow Sufjan Stevens fan. We started writing this song from the perspective of a restless spirit struggling to let go of loved ones in the world of the living. It might conjure images reminiscent of David Lowery’s film A Ghost Story - would recommend! The song was written and recorded in Mabel's bedroom in one afternoon. It was also our first attempt at writing with Cian, so you can say it went pretty well!

Your Company


‘Your Company’ was written in a small country town in Central Victoria called Guildfield, at a friend’s house who also owns a beautiful, old, little church. One afternoon as the sun was fading we sat on the porch of his little house and started writing this song. We thought we’d try and write a more uplifting song this time about the gratitude that we have for special people we appreciate in our lives. So each verse is about someone special to us. We decided to put this song last because the bridge in the song is dedicated to you, the listeners with a bit of a thank you and farewell until next time.