PREVIEW: Everything Harmony as The Lemon Twigs return with album and UK tour

The Lemon TwigsThe Lemon Twigs
The Lemon Twigs
The Lemon Twigs, the American rock duo of brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario, are back with their fourth studio album and a UK tour – which is heading this way.

They will be promoting new release Everything Harmony – out May 5 – with dates in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Brighton and Bristol.

BUY TICKETS: For gig details and dates see below and to buy tickets visit www.gigsandtours.com/tour/the-lemon-twigs.

PRE-ORDER/SAVE: Listen to the new album Everything Harmony, available from May 5 – CLICK HERE.

VIDEO: Watch the soft, surreal Monkees-esque official video for Any Time Of Day by The Lemon Twigs, from their album Everything Harmony, out May 5 – CLICK HERE.

Everything Harmony offers up 13 original servings of beauty that showcase an emotional depth and musical sophistication far beyond their years as a band, let alone as young men.

While they eagerly devour musical influences from everything and everywhere, they have somehow arrived at a cohesive and dynamic sound that speaks to our troubled times.

Having bounded onto the music scene with their precocious 2016 debut Do Hollywood, they threw caution to the wind two years later on their followup Go to School.

By the time of their third album, Songs for the General Public (2020) The Lemon Twigs had begun to pull from a wide range of multigenerational inspirations, expertly darting from twee chamber pop balladry to full on glam punk, mixing plaintive singer-songwriter confessionals with an almost Syd Barrett sense of outré pop.

In an interview from the time, they expressed an interest in creating “something really beautiful sounding” based on vocal harmonies and developing their combined melodic sensibilities into a setting where “the sounds were as important as the songs” themselves.

On Everything Harmony, the brothers have fully realised that vision, with a unified “Lemon Twigs sound” that successfully blends their distinct personalities while giving voice to their diverse and eclectic influences.

Opening the album with the unassuming acoustic folk of plaintive When Winter Comes Around, which echoes the sophisticated grandeur of classic Simon & Garfunkel recordings, they immediately switch things up to the sunny classic pop motif of In My Head.

From that point on Everything Harmony makes it clear that the Lemon Twigs can’t be pinned down.

Having recently worked with friends like Natalie Mering, with whom they appeared on the latest Weyes Blood album, they also collaborated with classic rock hero Todd Rundgren on his most recent album, Space Force. Rundgren, himself no stranger to eclecticism, says he can relate to their time-tripping approach to contemporary pop.

“They started when they were five and six years old, doing TV and Broadway and things like that,” says Rundgren.

“So, they have built-in appreciation for music that is of a couple of generations before theirs. I think they were bored by the music of their own generation, and since you can’t fast forward to the music of the future, you just start going backwards to music that was made before you were born. I can empathize with that impulse, because I did that too, back in the seventies.”

Released as the album teaser track, Corner of My Eye channels an Art Garfunkel-like vocal melody over a moody, vibraphone-tinged backing track suggesting the chamber pop of Brian Wilson.

Everything Harmony was mostly written and recorded between 2020 and 2021, when tracking for the album began at a “very chaotic” rehearsal studio in Manhattan.

“It was one of the noisiest places I’ve ever been,” says Brian.

“We did takes of acoustic guitar in between metal bands rehearsing next door and fire engines roaring down 8th Avenue. After months of sessions there, where we recorded the basic tracks to Corner Of My Eye, In My Head, I Don’t Belong To Me, What Happens To A Heart, Ghost Run Free, and New To Me, we decided enough was enough and we looked into studios that had acoustic echo chambers after hearing East West’s chambers during the recording of Weyes Blood’s latest record.”

They finally got out of town, but instead of ‘doing Hollywood’ again, they took the tapes to San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios where they added the album’s omnipresent vibraphone textures, harpsichord, French horn, strings, and many layers of vocal harmonies. To finish up, they flew home to their brand new studio in Brooklyn to finish mixing and mastering with the help of Paul Millar of Bug Sound.

Brian D’Addario notes the influence of two late lamented artists in particular this time; Moondog, and Arthur Russell whose album Iowa Dream encouraged them to lean into their own melodic tendencies and keep the arrangements delicate.

Related topics: