The story of Vancouver’s The Reckoners, Christina Simpson and Ricardo Khayatte, is a love story. The two met during a retreat a few years back and it was love at first sight. …And the Sky Opened Up, the duo’s debut, is love at first listen. The duo’s vocal interplay is spellbinding and the folk/country melodies feel breezy and effortless, bouyed by road-weary wisdom and propelled by the strength of the pair’s bond. This may only be a six-song offering, but listen to the shuffle-y Heartbreaker or the back porch worthy The Wanderer and you will hear a true, stripped-down gem hinting at a very bright future.

A variation on the Black Cab Sessions, for which an act climbs into the back of a taxi and performs while the vehicle drives around London, Vancouver’s Green Couch Sessions feature an act sitting on said piece of furniture and singing one song, in one take. This preview of the follow-up to this duo’s . . . And the Sky Opened Up EP features no more than a guitar, an accordion, and the perfectly matched voices of Christina Simpson and Ricardo Khayatte. It needs nothing else.

There must be something in the BC air that spawns sweet vocal harmonies. To the likes of harmony-driven groups like the Blue Shadows and the Be Good Tanyas, you can now add the Reckoners. Based on this debut six-song EP, the Vancouver, BC-based folk duo have the potential to take a place alongside those greats. Featuring Berklee graduate and TV composer Ricardo Khayatte and Christina Simpson, their voices fuse together so well it’s hard to imagine they’ve only been singing together for two years. The songs — all written by Khayatte — are nicely fleshed out with bass, drums, lap steel and guitar. They’re all on the gently contemplative side, and the imaginative lyrics of a number like “Eye For An Eye” (“I wish I was raised by wolvers”) also catch the ear. The inclusion of at least one track with a more energetic tempo would have been welcome, but we can certainly hope there’ll be a full-length disc from the Reckoners before too long.

The backstory of Vancouver based indie folk-pop duo The Reckoners reads a bit like a fairy tale. Ricardo Khayatte (vocals, guitar) and Christina Simpson (vocals) met at a cabin in the woods when invited out by a mutual friend for a ski weekend. The two hit it off and this EP is the fruit of that fateful meeting.

From the moment you hear Eye for an Eye one is immediately willingly enslaved by the plaintive beauty of these two voices. Whether it’s the stark mournfulness of the carefully crafted ballad Somethings, the catchy loping melody and honesty of Too Tough to Love, Timothy Tweedale’s haunting lap steel guitar on the country leaning Heartbreaker or the animated banjo-like guitar that propels The Wanderer, the exceptional musicianship and duo’s exquisite harmonies are treated respectfully with production that knows where to draw the line.

If there is one complaint, it’s that six songs barely whets one’s appetite

The Reckoners, a folk/country duo from Vancouver are not trying to bowl you over with a huge arrangement of instruments- and that’s the best thing about their debut EP, …And the Sky Opened Up. This is probably one of the most enchanting listens I’ve experienced in a while.

The duo, Christina Simpson and Ricardo Khayatte have the most wonderful chemistry. You can almost get the feeling that the two are lovers that have experienced the all the ways of the world. Both contribute flawless, breathy vocals (often together) and the only audible instruments are very gentle drums (almost sounding like taps) and very pleasant, soft acoustic guitar chords.

The songs generally deal with love and traveling the road, with many songs featuring both these themes. With these topics come a lot of great lyrics, such as “I wish I was raised by wolves/And free to roam this here land.” from the album opener “Eye for an Eye.” My favourite lyric of the EP is probably from “The Wanderer,” when Khayatte says “There ain’t fiction like the truth to make you think twice.”

The EP is at its most beautiful at “Too Tough to Love” which cranks the beauty up to eleven. The most memorable acoustic chords are here, and has a beautifully-worded chorus: “I was branded with an awkward grin/Dark brown eyes and suffering/But I’m too tough to love and rearrange/But honey you’re just as strange.”

In short, I was absolutely blown away by this album, not knowing what to expect and coming out with, without a doubt, one of this year’s hidden gems of folk music. I can only hope their future LP’s sound like this one- I’ll probably become a lifelong fan of theirs.

I was recently on the bus and overheard a man speaking with some tourists about our province. Here’s what he said:

“BC’s the most beautiful place in the world. Lotta beautiful Chinese girls, lotta beautiful white girls. Girl are beautiful to look at. There are more girls than guys in BC, about four to one. I’m not complaining!”

I’d like to see his sources on those statistics. Here are the Reckoners from Vancouver, who are probably much better ambassadors for our province than that guy and his questionable anthropological research. If you’re into countrified vocal harmonies and wistful dirt road folk, check out the new EP …And the Sky Opened Up. Here’s the opening track, “Eye for an Eye.”

It’s hard to believe that someone who creates songs as instantly memorable as this alt-country ballad doesn’t already have a deep catalogue of recorded material, but writer Ricardo Khayatte and singer Christina Simpson, both based in Vancouver, have only just released their debut EP. The most relevant antecedent here is Ryan Adams, specifically the Adams who penned early tracks such as “16 Days” and “Desperate Ain’t Lonely” for his old (and still mourned) band, Whiskeytown. This is as good as those.

“Finally, I have to make a few special mentions for some of the best EPs of the year, which make me look forward to full-lengths in 2011 (I hope!):

TEEN DAZE, Four More Years
BABE RAINBOW, Shaved
THE RECKONERS, And the Sky Opened Up
HUMANS, Avec Mes Mecs”

“The end result is both “indie” and modern yet undeniably “retro”; a vibe that has bestowed the Reckoners with a well-deserved “next big Canadian folk thing” tag in the press.”

Lately I’ve been gravitating to a lot of male/female collaborations, mostly of the roots/country variety, and one of the best pairs I’ve come across is Christina Simpson and Ricardo Khayatte, who collectively are The Reckoners. A quick read-through of their one sheet tells you the pair met “in a log cabin in the woods” on a group ski weekend trip. I swear, when you hear these two sing together, you’ll swear that trip was organized by destiny. Delicate interwoven melodies create the perfect backdrop for their voices, and together the whole concoction is intoxicating. Khayatte is a smooth blend of Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams, while Simpson sweet counterpoint oddly reminds me of a cross between Jacqui Abbott (ex of The Beautiful South) and Sarah Harmer.

…And The Sky Opened Up is The Reckoners’ debut EP, just six songs long, but a powerful first statement from a pair destined for great things. There’s chemistry in this combination beyond science and psychology. I firmly believe that somewhere out there, each of us has a soul mate, not just a romantic match but a creative match as well. Simpson and Khayatte and proof positive of that.

The Vancouver-based duo will be performing in their hometown at The Biltmore cabaret on August 30, the Vancouver International Fringe Festival on October 16, and at Cafe Deux Soleils on November 13. You can pick up …And The Sky Opened Up now at iTunes.

It’s pretty safe to say that your first album is a success when the worst review you get states that your CD would be good to bring home to a girlfriend. And for Vancouver’s folk duo The Reckoners, that’s exactly what happened.

“I think we had tons and tons of really great reviews and I think we only had one that wasn’t that awesome, from Edmonton,” says Christina Simpson, one half of The Reckoners, about their first album …And The Sky Opened Up. “And the guy said, like, ‘Yeah if you need a good CD to bring home to your girlfriend it’ll be ok,’ or something.”

Simpson and musical partner Ricardo Khayatte both let out a laugh. If that’s as bad as it gets, I think to myself, these two must be doing something right. Correction: they are doing something right.

Brought together through mutual friends and a shared passion for music, Simpson and Khayatte began singing together about two years ago. What started as a fun jam duo turned into an act for local open mic nights and now into this, The Reckoners, the harmonic duo that has everyone from The Vancouver Sun to Exclaim Magazine showing their support.

“It’s been pretty exciting,” says Simpson. “I think any time we’ve kind of thrown ourselves out there we’ve had a lot of really great reception.”

Still, though they would love The Reckoners to be their full-time jobs (Simpson currently works in tourism and Khayatte studies political science and psychology), they both view their music making as a passion more than a profession.

“I don’t feel like it’s this overly professional thing that we need to do,” Khayatte says. “We do it because we love to do it and we couldn’t go without it.”

The Reckoners take it one day at a time, putting all their efforts into whatever project they have next – whether it be a small local gig or, as is currently at the forefront, the recording of their second album (due out, hopefully, in a year).

“I guess that’s the thing about what we’ve been doing, we’ve kind of been doing one little goal at a time,” says Simpson. “It’s always about the next show or obviously the big project coming up is recording that second album. And just making sure that we have fun, that when we get together that we’re having fun and not just doing it because it’s work or we feel like we have to do it – [it’s about] making it something that we’re both really enjoying.”

The music of The Reckoners is soothing, relaxing, subtle. It doesn’t scream for your attention, but rather whispers to you so that hearing it feels almost natural. Gorgeous harmonies make up the musical body, Simpson’s and Khayatte’s voices combining to form simple and minimal – not to be confused with boring – beauty. It’s an effect they’ve purposefully chosen to represent their sound.

“We wanted to just let the songs breathe, let the songs just kind of speak for themselves,” says Khayatte. “The songs, in their nature, are quite simple; they’re more about the lyrics.”

“And I think also the more complicated it would be would possibly take away from the harmonies we were working on,” Simpson adds. “And we obviously kind of wanted that to be our focus.”

Because Simpson and Khayatte, 30 and 31 respectively, have been friends for just as long as they’ve been music partners (literally – they started jamming the night they met), their dynamic is one of genuine care and love for each other.

“It’s fun, we’re hanging out all the time, be it for music reasons or just because our friends are getting together,” says Simpson. “So it’s awesome. We really couldn’t have it any better than that. And I think we complement each other in really great ways musically.”

Khayatte agrees.

“Especially when we’re working together, there’s a magic that happens that I haven’t really ever found before,” he says.

Outside of their duo, The Reckoners have found wonderful friends in fellow Vancouver musicians, too; they’ve successfully established themselves within the Vancouver music community.

“Everyone’s really supportive of each other,” Simpson says. “The Vancouver music community right now is amazing; it’s so great to be a part of. There’s so many amazing musicians in Vancouver and it’s also small enough that you can kind of connect with everybody and feel like you’re a part of that community, which is probably more so than in bigger cities.”

And going beyond the scene in Vancouver, The Reckoners think it’s a wonderful time to be in music in general.

“I think that if you’re going into it and you’re trying to find yourself in the music industry, I guess with quotations around “music industry,” then you’re going to find, at least I would think that you would find it daunting and a difficult time to be involved,” Khayatte says. “But if you’re in it for music and what’s going on right now then it’s an absolutely amazing time. There’s a huge amount of variation in music, there’s a lot to draw from; there’s a hell of a lot more to draw from than there was 20 years ago, 30 years ago. From a lyrical perspective, there’s so much to talk about in our day and age. I think it’s an amazing time to be in the music world.”

And if music keeps on the way it’s been going, with people like Simpson and Khayatte creating as they do, being on the listening end isn’t so bad either.