Classicist brothers bring the sound of summer to a grey Brixton Thursday.
Touring their fifth album, New York duo The Lemon Twigs prove that summer can synaesthise into colours other than lime green. In a set overflowing with generosity, the D’Addario brothers painted the stage in honey.
The Lemon Twigs, Michael and Brian D’Addario, have had a turbulent career to date, garnering media attention early on and landing a deal with 4AD to record their debut in their teens, but an ambitious concept album followed that invited casual listeners down a rabbit hole they were unprepared to enter. The past two years have seen them in the ascendency once more, cementing a dedicated fanbase with the intricacy of their melodies and harmonies on 2023’s Everything Harmony and now 2024’s A Dream Is All We Know.
On the night, opening act Tchotchke set the tone with their brand of lightly shoegaze-accented indie pop, texturally apart from the headline act but with a similarly inviting sense of melody and atmosphere. Fellow New Yorkers, their debut single was recorded in the D’Addarios’ parents’ basement with the brothers’ handling production, and the bands have worked together regularly since. It took a moment to register that lead vocals were coming from behind Anastasia Sanchez’s drumkit, the eye drawn to Emily Tooraen’s dexterous guitar, and the three-piece guided us through much of their self-titled debut to an enthusiastic reception.
The brothers took to the stage, rounded out on this tour by Reza Matin (mostly drums) and Danny Ayala (a bit of everything). Brian was first to lead on vocals, with the latest album’s opening track and song-of-the-year contender My Golden Years. Within its three minutes it hits George Harrison and the Kinks in its guitar and melody and the Beach Boys in its rich harmonies and tempo changes, the main framework abandoned for short asides, before building to a crescendo of falsetto.
Next, they turn to The One from 2020’s Songs for the General Public, the only song from that record to make an appearance tonight, with Michael now singing lead. The verses could be a beefed-up reimagining of the Zombies’ Friends of Mine, while the chorus fits vast melodic dynamism into only a few seconds, before the first flourish of Michael’s guitar sees the song out.
A pair of songs from Everything Harmony follow, In My Head and What You Were Doing, the latter probably the meatiest rock song on offer in the first half of the set. Next we journey deeper into A Dream Is All We Know, the referentially titled Sweet Vibration actually ending with a snippet of the Byrds’ Turn, Turn, Turn. There’s a touch of Revolver-era Beatles about Church Bells, and a hint of Simon and Garfunkel to gentle ballad If You and I Are Not Wise.
After Any Time of Day continues the balladry, complete with a killer chorus, single-only release Foolin’ Around brings contrast with the kind of rollicking piano stomp favoured by early Elton John. A cover of British band The Keys’ I Don’t Wanna Cry is seamlessly folded into the band’s sound, before They Don’t Know How to Fall in Place is back in Beach Boys mode.
It’s easy to hear the influences in these songs, but the skill in their craft is that once heard, they sound like they’ve been around for ever. Almost any song heard tonight could be a lost single from the 60s or 70s. Justin Hawkins recently declared The Lemon Twigs his new favourite band after interviewing them for his podcast, and that makes perfect sense. They bring the same fascination with a style and an era, the same musical aptitude and the same sense of retconning themselves into the history of music as early Darkness records.
Throughout the show, the members trade instruments. Ayala takes turns at bass, keys and both lead and rhythm guitar. Michael takes over bass and keys at points. Brian particularly enjoys his spell on the drums, throwing and catching his sticks between fills. That said, Brian seems to enjoy every moment, with his kicks, jumps and midair splits adding to the sense of a band in love with rock and roll. The closing track of the main set is the aptly titled Rock and Roll (Over and Over), which resurrects a riff from the amber-coated mosquito of T-Rex and finally brings the glam always buried just below the surface.
Brian returns initially solo for the encore, with a trio of ballads, starting with Corner of my Eye, where he finds the purest Alex Chilton delivery for the chorus, and a new song, Joy, written in the midst of this tour and proving that the band are far from running out of melodies. After When Winter Comes Around, the band comes back in for How Could I Love Her More, which has a gargantuan Beach Boys chorus that would surely prove impossible to top, if not for the closing song being a pitch-perfect rendition of Good Vibrations. The sold out room, which for much of the show had proved impossible to navigate in any direction, somehow made room to dance.
Brian himself summed up the feeling the band evokes, all the way back during My Golden Years: ‘in time, I hope that I can show all the world the love in my mind.’ 350 people in Brixton are not quite all the world, but we sure felt on top of it.
Further Reading
The Lemon Twigs – My Golden Years (video)
The Lemon Twigs interview – The Guardian
The Lemon Twigs – How Can I Live Her More?
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