You'll be hard pressed in 2024 to find an album as listenable as A Dream Is All We Know by The Lemon Twigs. The Captured Tracks release is like candy for the ears. It's also, if not the best record the band's offered up, at least their most obviously endearing.
"My Golden Years" channels The Raspberries, while the title cut does Andrew Gold. While American radio pop from the Seventies weighs heavy on the sounds on this latest Lemon Twigs record, but luckily the D'Addario brothers are up the task of making that stuff sound fresh again. There's even a hint of Britpop brashness on "How Can I Love Her More?", one of the real highlights here on an album full of them. "Sweet Vibration" is elegant and concise, nearly a lost Leo Sayer AM Gold jam, while the Beach Boys-ish "In The Eyes of the Girl" enlists the powers of guest Sean Ono Lennon. The track stands in a special space that suggests a surf song written for The Wonders. And this whole record is so well-crafted that it's almost as if we've entered the world of that fake band, where power pop rules the airwaves and all the kids scream for it.
More than any other act in 2024, The Lemon Twigs know how to pinch from the past to craft something that seems new, and remains exciting. So very much of A Dream Is All We Know feels familiar, but it's that familiarity which excites. Listen after listen of this will make a person rememeber how great pop music can be when it's done right. There's no shame in crafting a really good pop song, and these guys are masters at doing just that. This is skillfully-made, expertly-played pop perfection on track after track. I can't rave enough about this record, and I'm sure I'll be playing it all summer long too.
A Dream Is All We Know by The Lemon Twigs is out on Friday via Captured Tracks.
[Photo: Stephanie Pia]