Kate & Anna McGarrigle, "Dancer with Bruised Knees"

Kate and Anna McGarrigle were sisters from Quebec, and the main reason I know them, which I imagine is the same reason most know them, is because Kate was married to Loudon Wainwright III, with whom she had Rufus and Martha.

In the 60s, they were attached to the burgeoning Montreal folk scene, as part of the Mountain City Four, a group that, as far as I can tell, only ever recorded the soundtrack for a documentary, in 1966, called Helicopter Canada.



They spent the majority of their careers as a two-woman unit, though, Kate & Anna McGarrigle. Tightly-harmonized folk that's charmingly capricious; the songs flutter around like butterflies in the breeze. Lyrically, they're incisive and often barbed, their emotional frankness being positioned front and center, with the instrumentals traipsing around their words and offering pillows upon which they rest.

Dancer with Bruised Knees, their 1977 full-length, feels right for today, so I'm plucking it off the tree and sharing it with you now.