Sometimes the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

Take The Chapin Sisters, for instance, the sparse folk-rock duo of Lily and Abigail Chapin, whose funereal new “Two” set rings with the backwoods harmonies of vintage Carter Family sides. Which adds up, since it was tracked in a spooky old barn in rural New Jersey, where the girls set up a makeshift studio. So it figures, then, that their father just happens to be Grammy-winning folkie Tom Chapin, brother of the equally-gifted composer Harry Chapin.

They were literally weaned on great songwriting at home in Brooklyn.

The girls — who’ll play Café Du Nord in San Francisco next Wednesday — honed their singing at a Waldorf School, where they studied not only orchestral music, but classic English folk and the complicated historical method of Shape-Note singing.

“Two” may only be their second album, but these Edward Gorey-ish siblings have already trilled on records from Vetiver, Gary Louris and Will Oldham, and toured alongside M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel’s She & Him.
If you like your folk with an eerie, Appalachian-murder-ballad edge, this show is not to be missed.

artsBackstage PassPop Music & JazzSan FranciscoThe Chapin Sisters