When brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario
first started making records, they were 19
and 17 years old, respectively. Today, neither
of them are out of their twenties, and in the
intervening decade, they’ve released six full
length albums and one e.p. of music as The
Lemon Twigs, one cover album of songs
written by their dad, and Brian has released
just last year his first solo album. They’ve
done more in a decade before turning 30
than a lot of musicians do their entire careers.
As young as they are, their music is old.
Everything they do is some permutation
of rock and roll decades past. They are equal
parts Rolling Stones and Beatles, Byrds and
Beach Boys, Bowie and Bacharach, Monkees
and Mamas, Papas, Zappa, surf music
and show tune. They try to capture everything
in their tuneful trap: glam, camp, folk, jangle
pop, psychedelia, musical theater, hard rock,
nearly anything and everything that was
cool before 1977. There are no modern
studio tricks, no samples, no sequences, no
synthesizers, no loops, no auto-tune, no
giant reverbs and compressors. The songs
sound old and the recordings sound old.
Not bad, just old. Do a side by side comparison
of Go To School with Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust
and you’ll be hard pressed to identify the
near four decades between them. And this
might be off-putting if these guys were not
absolutely great songwriters and producers.
And they’ve cast their net so widely, it’s near
impossible to dismiss them as some kind of
tribute act or retro revue band. They obviously
take their homage to everything yesterday seriously,
and yet they’re offering up something wholly
original and fresh. Their combined sibling
vision is unique, compelling, and contemporary,
even when the sonic palette goes back into
the previous century. There are songs in their
catalog so good they’re painful to listen to.
Sometimes some wading is necessary, because
they are all over the map and parts of that map
might not be as appealing as others, but one
does not have to wade (or wait) long before
another gem pops up. They are in turn equal
parts sincere and silly; their sense of humor
and sometimes madcap experimentation is
matched by beautiful melodies and accomplished
musicianship and songwriting. Because
I don’t care for them when they get trashy
(that’s usually Michael’s thing), and
I like them best when there’s a modicum of
continuity and a focus on the melody making
(that’s typically Brian’s thing), happily
the last two albums I have of theirs,
Everything Harmony and Look For Your Head,
are love letters to the soft rock of the 70’s
and the jangle and surf pop of the 60’s.
The weirdest thing about these two records
is how unapologetically not weird they are.
Spinning six albums by The Lemon Twigs
in a single day: we could do much worse.
We could do much, much worse.
- Do Hollywood, 4AD Records, 2016, black vinyl.
- Brothers of Destruction, 4AD Records, 2017, black vinyl.
- Go To School, 4AD Records, 2018, black double vinyl.
- Songs for the General Public, 4AD Records, 2020, black vinyl.
- Everything Harmony, Captured Tracks Records, 2022, clear vinyl.
- Look For Your Mind, Captured Tracks Records, 2026, translucent coke bottle green vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 