By Annabel Ross and Barry Divola
The Lemon Twigs: Precocious but kind of jaw-dropping, too.
The Lemon Twigs, A Dream Is All We Know
You may recall that last year The Beatles were reincarnated with Now and Then, a song Frankensteined together to re-animate a demo John Lennon recorded back in the ’70s. On paper, it was easy to get swept up in the nostalgia of it while gawking at the advances in technology involved and sniffling along to the moving video by Peter Jackson that ensured there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if you were of a certain age. I’ll admit that I got a bit misty.
The song, however, was decidedly meh, a pale, sanitised, somewhat limp proposition that failed to do what the breathless advance press was trumpeting – a triumphant virtual reformation of the four men who forever revolutionised popular music.
At the time I wondered aloud about how much better it would have been to provide the stems of the song to a range of artists who were heavily influenced by The Beatles to see what they could do with it. And right up near the top of my wishlist would have been the Lemon Twigs.
Brian and Michael D’Addario, brothers from Long Island, were former child actors on stage and screen, and that precociousness came to the fore on their debut album, 2016’s Do Hollywood, a totally nutso melding of Todd Rundgren, White Album/Abbey Road-era Beatles, The Beach Boys’ Smile and The Monkees.
The Lemon Twigs are brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario.
Over ensuing albums, they continued to throw in everything plus the kitchen sink; 2020’s Songs for the General Public was almost like a rock opera in scope, with the brothers, who play virtually all the instruments on their recordings, seemingly able to ape and adopt any musical style they pleased. On their last album, last year’s Everything Harmony, they pulled back on the manic approach a bit on what they called their “Simon & Garfunkel record”. The reference was no doubt tongue-in-cheek, but the songs were less cluttered, more heartfelt, and showcased the duo’s frighteningly good way with pristine harmonies.
The siblings are still only in their mid-twenties, but on most of their fifth album they sound like they’re living in an eternal 1968. On Peppermint Roses and They Don’t Know How To Fall in Place, you can hear the influence of the Zombies’ 1968 psychedelic-pop cult album Odessey and Oracle, while How Can I Love Her More? distils and refashions the ’60s sunshine pop of the Association or the 5th Dimension.
In the Eyes of the Girl may be co-produced by John and Yoko’s son Sean Ono Lennon, but it’s more Beach Boys than Beatles, dropping in on a wave Surfer Girl has ridden for decades. And it’s not the only one. On a number of songs they channel the baroque pop orchestrations and layer-cake harmonies of Brian Wilson so well that it can get a little scary.
The danger of all this, of course, is that they could easily become musical magpies and pop revivalists who are all skill and little heart. But the brothers’ boundless energy and melodic inventiveness make it difficult to be churlish.
Two outliers top and tail the album with wildly different results. Album closer Rock On (Over and Over) is a hoary ’70s rocker that approximates Slade jamming with Status Quo, with an added horn section, and sounds like it has dropped in from the wrong album – and should have been dropped from this one.
But opener My Golden Years is one of the most naggingly catchy tunes in the brothers’ naggingly catchy catalogue, a high-flying melody that floats on guitars that jangle and sparkle, like a long-lost power pop song from the late ’70s that has magically appeared out of nowhere.
It’s almost as if they’re saying “Look ma! There’s nothing we can’t do!” Precocious? Sure. But kind of jaw-dropping, too. Now, will someone at Beatles HQ please send them those Now and Then tapes? Barry Divola
Justice’s Hyperdrama: The French duo’s first new album in eight years is nowhere near as bold as its title suggests.
Justice, Hyperdrama
In the mid-2000s, there were few acts cooler than French duo Justice. Their infectious remix of Simian’s Never Be Alone was inescapable for at least three years and was both an anthem and exemplar of nu-rave, the dance-indie-rock fusion genre that thrilled young millennials and introduced pub-dwellers to the pleasures of club music.
Justice was a punkier Daft Punk, indisputably influenced by the French pioneers but with a spikier attitude and more guitars. They came up around the same time as uber-hip French record label Kitsuné, but were the flagship act for the edgier Ed Banger records, helping to shape its abrasive sound and a massive underground following that eventually went mainstream.
By 2009, however, in spite of two Grammy nominations for their debut album and one win for their remix of MGMT’s Electric Feel, Justice’s star began to dip along with the blogosphere. The prog-rock influenced Audio, Video, Disco in 2014 and pop-disco stylings of 2016’s Woman weren’t bad, necessarily, they just weren’t nearly as vital and brazen as their 2007 debut, Cross.
Hyperdrama, arriving eight years after their last studio album, has new challenges to meet and new audiences to attract. But it’s hard to see how Justice’s latest might win over Zoomers or recapture the imagination of Cross fans, despite the band’s efforts to branch out.
For the first time, Justice has enlisted a raft of guest stars; vocals feature more prominently than ever before. Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker appears on not one but two songs, but the duo might’ve done well to mine Parker’s production skills as well as his singing voice. He might have helped them make something a little more inspired than Neverender. One Night, All Night is slightly better, but still sounds more like a middling Tame Impala cut than a good Justice track.
Afterimage, featuring a lovely vocal turn by nascent Amsterdam artist RIMON, is effective but repetitive, and would’ve hit that much harder with an interesting bridge or coda. The album’s middle section is best, kicking off with Dear Alan, a funky tribute to the French house producer Alan Braxe that makes exactly the kind of latterly deviation that could’ve elevated much of Hyperdrama.
Incognito, too, with its unconventional structure, huge organ synths and guitar interludes recalls vintage Justice, dialled back a few notches. Mannequin Love, vaguely echoing Daft Punk’s Instant Crush, is appealing, but it also sounds like the most impressive Tame Impala feature on the album, making you wonder if collaborators The Flints were instructed to do their best impression of Kevin Parker.
Even Connan Mockasin, who appears on the more dramatic Explorer, could be mistaken for Parker. Miguel and Thundercat, singing on Saturnine and The End respectively, couldn’t be accused of the same, but both are fiercely talented guitarists who surely could’ve injected these tracks with more of their own flair and personality.
Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories seems an obvious touchpoint on the album, which reaches for mature, stylised drama in moments, and occasionally pulls it off, as on the space odyssey-esque Explorer and Muscle Memory and the sultry, jazzy Moonlight Rendez-vous. But the rest of the time Justice sound like a watered-down version of their Cross-era peak. Generator doesn’t so much grunt and roar as hum along in a pale imitation of the epic Genesis, while Neverender suffers the same fate, its potential impact blunted by heavy filtering and befuddling restraint.
It was Justice’s largesse — their huge, crunching guitars, daring levels of distortion and jugular-aiming synths — that endeared them to so many 20 years ago. Too bad Hyperdrama isn’t half as bold as its title suggests. Annabel Ross
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