Twin Shadow: Forget (2010)

(4AD)

RECOMMENDED

Call it chillwave if you like, but we appear to be in the middle of an '80s revival. Although this record remains obscure enough that it lacks even a Wikipedia entry, it shares with the more celebrated Before Today by Ariel Pink (reviewed below) a firm foothold in a sound that ten years ago seemed entirely passé but has now established itself as a mark of indie bands at all levels of popularity. The question of when this began is somewhat interesting and merits a brief tangent.

No pun intended. Most folks will probably remember a band of pseudo-goth poseurs called Orgy who made chart hay out of a ponderous cover of New Order's "Blue Monday." That was 1998. Three years before that, an independently released record called Get Lost by the Magnetic Fields self-consciously aimed for a fusion of the '80s ironicists Pet Shop Boys and ABC with classicist pretensions toward Cole Porter and the Brill Building. The Fields' preceding record, their first with wide distribution, was a brilliant synth-country experiment called The Charm of the Highway Strip which must have sounded at the time like a deliberately incongruous revival of out-of-date keyboard noise. In fact, Strip was recorded in 1988. It sounded like a tribute, but it was really the genuine article, in a similar universe to the seldom-acknowledged fact that the first version of the Beatles formed in 1956.

By the 2000s, the Magnetic Fields were celebrated as a national treasure and signed to a major label. Near-mainstream bands like We Are Scientists were scoring hits with backward-looking singles aping the mid-'80s production style of music that was in its heyday considered too "pop" for the underground scene. Dance and club music, never far from the '80s spiritually (Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys have remained peerless hitmakers in that genre long after the peak of their mainstream popularity), began to consciously, unguility revisit the feeling and spark of two-decade-old synthpop hits. Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem's hip revision of PSB and OMD was followed by the still-massive Madonna's direct acknowledgement with singles like "Hung Up." The four biggest bands in indiedom owe debts obvious (Arcade Fire reincarnates Depeche Mode and U2; Death Cab for Cutie's biggest hit is arguably a rewrite of DM's "Enjoy the Silence") and subtle (Vampire Weekend stakes its career on their audience's memories of Paul Simon's Graceland, whether they will admit it or not; the Shins emerged from three-year shadows this year with an able cover of Squeeze's "Goodbye Girl").

The point being: the music of the 1980s, particularly synthpop and alternative, is well-mined territory. But it is unusual for it to be approached with the sort of lyricism and vocal capabilitiy of someone like Brooklyn's Twin Shadow, real name George Lewis Jr., a Dominican Republic-born singer-songwriter with a tentative, sweetly lilting voice and a major burgeoning talent of the new, non-lo-fi lo-fi -- think of it as minimalistically created music with aims for high-level pop impact, the idea put across by Stephin Merritt on Highway Strip all those years ago. Twin Shadow's debut album, produced by Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, is essentially a sophisticated variant on New Romantic synthpop, with extra production shades of New Order, Suicide, Tears for Fears, the Go-Betweens, Josef K, the Cure, and of course PSB and DM. His sweetly sad dabblings in the field are quite appealing, but the reason to hear this record is its more warm-blooded qualities: the singing and the lyrics are what to watch for here.

On the very indie opening track, "Tyrant Destroyed," equipped with a slow ominous build, the words reveal an unexpected fragility: "As if it wasn't enough just to hear you speak / They had to give you lips like that / Like all of your sadness reduced to a color / Then painted upon... / How could I forget you / And who was I to think that on a Saturday night / That you would really bike home alone / And the way that I left you / Just hanging on Sundays / Let fair skin boy take you home." On the soft rock drone "When We're Dancing": "I am trying to remember all the things that I've known / They all shine soft and stand alone / Like I picture you waiting at the end of a bridge / But it's hard for me to render all the things that we did." The outwardly confident, cyclical "Yellow Balloon" reveals a gorgeous aching: "In the pines we learn to speak / Bend your knees, forget to breathe / If you hear your mama calling, get away from me... / Secret handshakes, the swimming hole / Keep awake, and we will not grow old."

None of these have music to match the depth of emotions in the words, even though Lewis sings them beautifully. They are buried under nostalgia that may or may not be part of the story but doesn't feel nearly so necessary as he probably thinks. He could get away with far less embellishment, and his songs would benefit for it. The sepia tone that the throwback sound adds only really clicks on two songs. "Shooting Holes at the Moon" is a masterful big-beat evocation of choppy 1986 production, vocally and melodically suggesting Echo & the Bunnymen or the Smiths. The persuasive melody of "Castles in the Snow" is enhanced by perfect self harmonies; its period-piece echo cacophony is entirely in service of emotion. The same can't really be said of something like the new wave retread "I Can't Wait"; the Talking Heads/Information Society pseudopop of "At My Heels," driven by what sounds like a toy drum machine; the shimmering 1980s wall of sound of "For Now." These come off like retro trips burying ideas that are far more interesting.

Part of the reason I can't fully buy the final product, as enamored as I am of some of its elements, is that I think this sort of pop production was built for hook-filled pop singles; Lewis reveals himself, sure, to be a master of the pop sound... but not so much of the pop hook. "Tether Band" has the sound of a buried Depeche Mode album track but feels at times like a semi-shapeless meander through synth noise; yet again, the intimate vocals feel completely out of place, hovering above and beyond what surrounds them. "Slow" convincingly suggests Hot Chip, "Forget" is a singsong Prince slo-jam with requisite college rock lite-droning in the manner of Beach House, but neither song matches its window dressing particularly well. This is fun to a point as a sort of exercise, but it's also distracting.

My diagnosis is this is too goddamned polite. Twin Shadow has the potential to be a giant if he just lets himself go a little bit. He has a powerful, sensual voice with ample emotional capability. I firmly believe he has some brilliant music in him and that we'll be hearing a lot about him in the next few years. And I'm willing to bet that'll be because he lets go of some of his attachment to the admittedly wonderful music he and I both listened to and loved growing up and strips this material down to its core. It is more than worth the effort. Take away the gimmicry and you have eleven outstanding songs here. Ariel Pink may have worked up genuine magic from a regeneration of the past, but that's his gift. Twin Shadow's gift is writing subtle, sorrowful songs about loss, memory, and regret. Forget seems inexplicably determined to divert us from noticing that. Fear of embarrassment might be the one thing holding this possible future master back from transcendence; I can't wait to find out.