Lemon Twigs - Dream Is All We Know [LP]

Since the release of their debut studio album Do Hollywood (on 4AD) in 2016, The Lemon Twigs-the New York City rock band fronted by brothers Brian (27) and Michael D'Addario (25)-have waved the same revivalist torch as Alex Chilton and his Big Star crew, working to prove that archaic music from the '60s and '70s can still be relevant in digital world. Alongside peers like Foxygen and Drugdealer, The Lemon Twigs have explicitly documented a synchronistic blend of contemporary narrative motifs, old-school recording techniques, and flawless, consistent attitudes collaged from various crucial stages of rock 'n' roll. After a whirlwind 2023, the D'Addarios are continuing the momentum of their own evolving vision and voice, distilling a history lesson of baroque and power pop into A Dream Is All We Know (out May 3 on Captured Tracks).Garnering the top-to-bottom critical acclaim the brother's have long deserved, their 2023 LP Everything Harmony was spearheaded by an impressive string of singles, including "Corner Of My Eye," "Any Time of Day," "In My Head," and "Every Day Is the Worst Day of My Life" and some imaginative, delightful deep cuts like "What You Were Doing" and "Ghost Run Free." It was the kind of record that put all of Brian and Michael's talents on display, be it the former's multi-instrumentalist gifts or the latter's boyish, explosive pop-rock charisma and eye for engineering and vocal layering. But A Dream Is All We Know is not the acoustic, nylon string-based project that Everything Harmony was. Instead, it's a return to the form The Lemon Twigs first introduced on Do Hollywood-an electric guitar-centric, anthemic assemblage of, really, everything the band does great. These two companion records are an immediate example of a band capitalizing on their fire-in-the-belly appetite to make tunes that boast ubiquitous chemistry. A Dream Is All We Know is grandiose yet grounded; meticulous, yet wild and glowing. Made with analog precision, the album was finished in the immediate months after the band completed Everything Harmony. Both records were made in a vibrant, prolific period split between three studios on separate coasts and, while Everything Harmony was a pensive, orchestral history lesson in chamber melodies and deeply engrossing harmonics layered ten voices thick, A Dream Is All We Know is the ashy pop-rock record the Lemon Twigs first teased the potential of making eight years ago. It's a profoundly dense and charged album, rife with string arrangements ("Ember Days") and a sonic thesis statement that has quaked through phases of glam, conceptualism, baroque, and Mustang-loud, stone-cold rock 'n' roll for more than half-a-century ("Rock On (Over and Over)"). A Dream Is All We Know sounds like it's lived a thousand lives already.