Pitchfork

The aural equivalent of a dryer-warm fleece blanket, Carolyn Berk's introspective orchestral pop outfit Lovers is preparing to serenade the lovelorn this spring with their third record of lush balladry.

Berk trades on the patching of hearts broken, armed with a guitar, twilight-haze production, and the most devastating vocal quaver this side of Conor Oberst. But! Oberst detractors are beseeched to read on, for Lovers forego all pretension in favor of weaving heartfelt tales of romance and woe. Tales which, in this irony-marred age, are most duly welcome.

Sleep With Heat features ten original compositions and feels, according to Berk, "more mature" than the previous Lovers albums: 2002's melancholy Star Lit Sunken Ship and 2004's slightly-less-melancholy The Gutter and the Garden. As with those discs, Sleep will drop via Athens' Orange Twin imprint. Keep a hankie handy:

01 Perpetual Motion, Perpetual Sound
02 Frozen Floods
03 Saint Jude
04 From A Highway
05 Dead Deer
06 The Lucky Ones Who Love You
07 My Heart Never Sleeps
08 The Sirens Sing
09 An Army Of Lovers Cannot Fail
10 Take Good Care

The curious and the fond may experience two of Sleep With Heat's numbers in their glorious entireties at Lovers' cozy MySpace corner. Learn all the words and then join Lovers as they swoop down to SXSW and then promenade across the U.S. this month.

Lovers is for lovers:

03-17 Austin, TX - Monkey Wrench Books
03-18 Austin, TX - The Hideout (Orange Twin SXSW showcase) *
03-21 Oklahoma City, OK - The Conservatory #
03-22 Columbia, MO - Mojo's
03-23 Ames, IA - The Practice Space %
03-24 Des Moines, IA - Vaudeville Mews $
03-25 Minneapolis, MN - TBA
03-27 Minneapolis, MN - 400 Bar
03-28 Chicago, IL - Corduroy's Espresso Spot
03-29 Bloomington, IN - Baby Seal Club
03-30 Akron, OH - Square Records
03-31 Pittsburgh, PA - Modern Formations
04-01 Charlottesville, VA - The Tea Bazaar
04-02 Chapel Hill, NC - Nightlight
04-03 Columbia, SC - The Art Garage ^
04-07 Philadelphia, PA - TBA
04-08 New York, NY - Pianos &
08-03 Olympia, WA - Capitol Theater (Homo a Go Go)

* with Elf Power, Great Lakes, Jeff, Instruments, Gerbils, Geoff Reacher
# with Low Skies, Skies Fallen, Claire de Lune
% with Arise, Devilfish (aka Running Sore), Imaginary Enemies
$ with Organ Donor, Tom Brousseau, Some by Sea
^ with Work Clothes, Falling Off a Building, Josh McCormack & with the Feverfew

What's more, Berk tells us she is presently at work on a "secret, home-spun foil" to the "occasionally slicker production" of Sleep With Heat: look out, kids, it's a "sexy dance band project"! Also in the works are a book of poems and a screenplay. We hope those are sexy too.

And finally, Lovers just contributed the track "Honea" to the forthcoming Kill Rock Stars compilation The Sound the Hare Heard. My heart never sleeps, indeed!

* Orange Twin: http://www.orangetwin.com/