By Emily Hatch
I avoided everything Lemon Twigs before listening to Everything Harmony, the new album out on Captured Tracks. No Googling about the new; no listening-relistening to other Lemon-y Twigs; no asking others/looking in forums/reading reviews/digging for deets. NO SPOILERS and their insta-bias, intended or not.
So how to describe this without spoiler-izing for others?
It. Is. Magnificent. MAGNIFICENT.
Pure, crystalline beauty.
The gorgeous, bleak beauty of so many B sections on record shelves: Beatles, Beach Boys (sigh, Brian...), Big Star, Brothers D'Addario.
Beauty is a trickster, and ephemeral, and often the shortest route to vulnerable. It's a quick hit, and dangerous as any. Like love: can first encounters with beauty be trusted? Can we let ourselves listen openly to beauty, without irony or deflection, even though we risk hurt?
My notes for this listening say SYMPHONIC PAIN. There are strings, there are jangly guitars (would that there were a synonym for "jangly"), there are sparkly acoustics, perfect-structure drums, and distant, creamy-sounding horns. Singular beginnings to songs that open into layers over the very most wistful of chord changes. George Martin would be so pleased.
And over all, those beautiful, angelic voices. Clear and discrete in some beginnings before floating over into the fullest harmonies. How can those so-beautiful voices sing so much hurt? Sing with the lure of beauty about the risks of love? How can lyrics of a mantra of pain sound so heavenly?
Some records of beauty that have seasoned over time must be played with caution -- "DANGER: RAW EMOTIONS AHEAD!" -- Big Star's Third, Joni's Blue, so much Harry Nilsson, or Roberta Flack, or Bill Withers, or Townes Van Zandt. Sometimes you want to keep the scar and its pain alive, extend the feeling of it, and know you will come out on the other side, better for having braved the intensity of an experience that sounds like someone made it just for you and your own love and loss.
Everything Harmony by The Lemon Twigs is out on Friday via Captured Tracks.
[Photo: Captured Tracks]