Dusk is a bittersweet time of day. There’s no other point in the sun’s arc that captures the imagination quite like it. Maybe the Nashville-based alt. folk-pop trio the Bittersweets can’t literally splash a sunset across the sky, but they bring the same striking contrast of shadow and luminescence to the ears.

The Bittersweets—Chris Meyers (guitar, keyboards, vocals) and Hannah Prater (vocals, guitar)—live up to their name. They fuse yellows and blues, sunniness and melancholy, with evocative lyrics and lush arrangements, transcendent melodies and Prater’s alluring voice. On every track of their new album, Goodnight, San Francisco, their recent live set, Long Way From Home, and their 2006 full-length debut, The Life You Always Wanted, the Bittersweets weave a captivating tension between hope and poignancy that rings true.

“I think the name fits us because a lot of the songs talk about life’s tensions and that you can’t just have happy or just dwell on the sad,” Prater explains. “I feel like a lot of the songs embrace both, the beautiful and the ugly, happy and sad—life’s paradoxes.” And the Bittersweets are well-equipped for that sort of musical alchemy.

There’s a reason why Prater’s singing is such a satisfying pleasure. Both of the California native’s parents are music teachers; she sang in jazz groups and musical theatre productions; and she pursued a degree in vocal performance, before discovering a different style of vocal expression in Joni Mitchell and Over the Rhine. Prater drew the best from each approach to hone her sumptuous vocal instrument.

“Hannah has so much vocal control,” says Meyers. “That’s a rarity for pop vocalists. The technical stuff just seems like second nature to her.”

Before the Massachusetts-born Meyers ever picked up a guitar in his late teens, he was an accomplished jazz pianist. His musical epiphany came during college. As he dug into the history of American roots music and wrote at length about how country music made its way from front porches to radio airwaves, his musical palette was forever changed. Of his college studies, Meyers says, “They turned me on to a bunch of artists that I never really listened to before—everything from bluegrass to Johnny Cash or Gram Parsons, the whole spectrum.”

Meyers is the Bittersweets' primary songwriter. He crafts poetic, often abstract lyrics and the kind of melodies that send shivers of sensory pleasure down the spine. “He keeps everything so interesting,” says Prater. “He keeps me thinking, he keeps me on my feet and having to interpret, and that’s something I’ve always loved to do.”

That new album, Goodnight, San Francisco, flows seamlessly through eleven gorgeous mood pieces. Lex Price—Mindy Smith producer and sideman—lent his delicate producing touch, and brought in a perfectly sympathetic team of players: steel guitarist Russ Pahl (Don Williams), bassist Dave Jacques (John Prine), guitarist Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin), cellist David Henry (Ben Folds), organ player John Deaderick (Emmylou Harris) and others. GRAMMY nominee Jason Lehning (Guster) also lent his mixing and playing abilities to the project.

Goodnight marks the end of the Bittersweets’ season in San Francisco and the beginning of a new one in Nashville with a leaner lineup (the Bittersweets recorded The Life You Always Wanted as a quintet). “Basically we were all going through various personal struggles the last year we were there, even as a band,” says Meyers. “One of the band members went to law school and another one had a baby—both of which are wonderful things.” But that meant shifting from their five-person lineup—which included bassist Daniel Schacht and multiinstrumentalist Jerry Becker—into trio mode, a change that’s ultimately made the Bittersweets even more versatile.

For more information please visit www.myspace.com/thebittersweets or contact Joe at Quite Great Roots on 01223 410000 or email joe@quitegreat.co.uk. The band will be on a tour of the UK throughout January.