?Twin Shadow – 8/01 Pontiac Crofoot Ballroom – Pike Room
Got a sec? Just 5-secs…
George Lewis is singing about relationships and it gets me wondering how much you really know me. How close are we, friend?
How eerie it is, if you’ve marked it, when out at the bar you come to a new face and realize, though you haven’t met, shaking hands with eye-contact and all, that you may yet still follow one another; some social-network-snake eating itself whereupon you come face-to-face with those whom you’re only face-book-friends-with…
Twin Shadow is dazzling on its surface, but this time around, the layers of sound are woven more thickly, there’s more air in its lungs, and its hands are reaching for new sonic tools, different pedals, indulging oscillations and experimenting with marching-band cadences.
Dynamic cascades of funky guitar riffs, shoulder-juking, stutter-step drum-hails over echoing synth plumes; this is sublime sound of half-remembered dreams and dancefloor dizzies, the bass fuzzes out like smooching thunder flutters, the airy croon giving voice to a thawing heart on the mend.
But how much do you care? As long as you can dance me round the room while you lie to me…(Our protagonist bitingly woos on the aptly titled “I Don’t Care.”)
Man, the muddy burst of those synth-snapped / hand-clap-mimicking drums, sounds so weird and so cool. The thick sonic curtains drawn and flapped melodramatically by intertwining pianos and guitars, the forceful fits of an inherently fragile expressivity. Cool-ass mood music; moody, to be sure, but cool – disco-cool, space-rock cool, weird cool. Bass wrung with studio trickery, ambient tones bent and wound-out to pensive howls at the periphery. A dance-beat, always a dance-beat. Synths purring out with grandiosity like neon-lights of skyscrapers staring down as we blurb-by… Gets you up and moving, gets your feet, your knees, shoulders, hips all locking in, with half-closed eye lids and maudlin lips at a half-pucker. Heart-on-the-sleeve, but cool.
This is George Lewis’ Confession, in which he finds a groove all his own, one free of the complications of love, the weakening ware of hate, the heave of over-sensitivity. “to give up everything and say just what you mean,” his syrupy murmur shrugs you off and can’t see the point in overanalyzing “every kiss.” And then those crazy drum-corps drums clatter in over wispy synth loops.
“This isn’t love,” he belts out a wavy melody at the chorus of “Run My Heart.” “You don’t know my heart / so don’t you dare…”
Lewis is an artist who comes to us on his 2nd album with a compelling back story: born as, yes, an actual twin, in the Dominican Republic, and growing up a lonely boy in Florida who eventually fell under the spells of weirdo experimental new-wave types like Bowie and Arthur Russell and eventually, into adulthood, getting carried away off into the choppy cultural rapids of New York where he set up his own studio and started forging his debut album, 2010’s breakthrough Forget.
His voice is the 2nd coming of the quintessential new-wave-ian pedal-plucking romanticism; put it under a chugging bass groove and weirdly afro-beat-tinged rhythms, shush in generous swaths of synth and gnarly guitars and you’ve got a heavenly pop blend.
Lewis’ soul-baring lyrics, honest, dotted with hurt and steeled by a coagulating self-awareness, reminds me that we, as listeners (/viewers) are often responding to the artist-as-protagonist, a full human with his/her own backstory with which we can acquaint ourselves. The semi-autobiographical-effect. The same way we were allured to the quirky character of a Dan Deacon or a Daniel Johnston and could then enjoy, on dual-levels, the effervescence of their music and thus reflect upon how their character, their quirks, influenced their unique sounds.
That’s the case here, if anyone were to, in the manner of an obsessive-musicHead-of-yore, click back and read-up on all the man’s recent interviews. You could also pick up on the fascinating story, one album to the next, of hearing the evolution of an artist, beyond the mere addition of new instrumentations and fortified recording equipment. To listen, track to track, as our man, our protagonist finds his way as a composer of pop, to hem in catharsis and social chaos by means of puzzling-together taut timbres and sequenced beats, syrupy bass and tinny guitars. Richer, fuller, and yes, more complex.
It’s just I’m not sure how interested we are, anymore, in getting to know the real you.The real me. And how that effects what music, what writing, is rendered. Are we moving too fast? To many new bands to check out; digital-intake; music as motel rooms.
Too fast? Just the perfunctory– log-in, check-up, update, tweet, like, and log-off?
Neon colors splash over your convertible as you cruise down smooth pavement tinged-orange by the setting sun behind you, your face furled by the cool summer’s air – that’s it, there, all in the sound of those buzzing guitars and chopping synths of lead single “Five-Seconds.” (Viewed above).
But Lewis is dubious at how perceptive you could be, when life’s so endemically hurried. “…there’s no-way…” “I can’t get to your heart…” Not when one only permits “-five-seconds… in your heart…”
For more, check out: http://twinshadow.net/
