Take two brothers, steep them in the great music of the Sixties, wind them up and watch them go. Brian D'Addario and Michael D'Addario have been making great records and touring since they were in their teens. (Now they're in their twenties.) Along the way, they've written some incredible songs.
But this latest album looks to be the one that might finally push them to the top. Called "A Dream Is All We Know," the collection of songs is pretty much perfect.
The Lemon Twigs are deep in one of the great songwriting grooves of the 21st century. Or is it the previous century? Their new album, A Dream is All We Know, is a fabulous pop confection that magically transports the listener to the idyll of Abbey Road studios in 1966, if the Beatles were actually two brothers in their mid-20s from Long Island, New York. However, Brian and Michael D’Addario are reluctant to write off their music as nostalgic escapism.
“Yes, we record on analogue tape, and we don’t think being on phones all day is a good way to live our lives,” sighs Michael at their Brooklyn studio. “But it’s not like we’re rejecting ‘contemporary life’. And I don’t know what we’re really excluding from our lives by not using social media or recording on Pro Tools, anyway. Who wants to stare at a computer when they’re doing something that’s supposed to be fun?”
“We’re just writing music that suits us,” adds Brian, the more sober Mike Nesmith to his younger brother’s irrepressible Micky Dolenz. “Dylan’s early songs were indebted to Woody Guthrie, but he wasn’t being retro – he was continuing a tradition, just like classical composers wrote for violins and cellos for centuries. We have our own style; we’re not rewriting music that already exists. This is new music!”
The classicist bent of The Lemon Twigs’ pop is hardly surprising, given that their parents – musician-songwriter Ronnie D’Addario and singer-neuropsychologist Susan Hall – raised the boys in the 00s on the tunes of their own youth. “They’re older parents, and they’d sit us in front of old Ed Sullivan Show appearances by the Dave Clark Five, the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Beatles,” remembers Michael. “The Beatles meant as much to us as superheroes or NFL stars to other kids. We could not relate to anybody at school,” he laughs. “We were obsessed with understanding chord structures and figuring out the architecture of recording. It was like being part of a secret club.”
"Obsessed" is a word you hear a lot from Twigs fans. Because you don't ever listen to one of their songs once!
And they have fans everywhere in the music business. (Todd Rundgren, Foxygen, Elton John, Iggy Pop, Marc Almond, Laura Marling, Gary Brooker, Boy George, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Flea, and Wayne Coyne are among their admirers.)
This cut, "In The Eyes Of The Girl," is a perfect summer confection that sounds like (as one critic put it) "a song Brian Wilson forgot to write." Produced by Sean Ono Lennon, it's an old-style Beach Boys tribute.
