Simon Reynolds wrote in his 2010 book of pop culture criticism, Retromania, “Nostalgia gets a bad rap….The past can be used to critique what’s absent in the present.” The Lemon Twigs get a bad rap, too, asterisked by critics who find their music too beholden to their primary influences: the Beach Boys and the Beatles. The band’s D’Addario brothers, while weary of these recurring charges, increasingly embrace their derivative predilections, wittily tagging their sound “Merseybeach”.
The Lemon Twigs are not the first pop group to fly too close to the sun or flip the script on their critics. Oasis spent their entire career outflanking accusations of Beatles pilfering by referencing them with provocative regularity. Moreover, Oasis were associated with a genre—Britpop—that wore its retromania on the sleeves of its 1960s-styled parkas and anoraks. When a retro style becomes a dominant form of present-day popular music, is that just a product of nostalgia or an aberrant psycho-social syndrome? Or both?
Going retro has its appeals. It can fulfill our need for comfort in the face of crises. It can also satisfy our memory banks, sending us back to that time in our lives when music meant the most and we invested our most intense emotions in it. Such sounds remind us of our youth and carefree days, when our tastes were formed during our teenage years and solidified in our 20s. Later, when music redolent of those times and tastes is heard, the good vibes we recall are triggered, and our feelings of joy, warmth, and sociality are elevated.
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Going retro also has socio-cultural appeal. Scholars of nostalgia argue that the predilection often takes hold during times of social turmoil and anxiety. By looking back to a kinder, gentler (if imagined) era before the perceived decline, a comforting coping strategy is installed in the emotional seat of our brains. Our rosy retrospection becomes a cognitive bias through which we recall the past as more positive than it actually was. Music is often the nostalgia candy of choice during such journeys into escapism, particular bands and songs providing the gateway onto memory lane.
Many see parallels between our current time of political disruptions to those of the 1970s, when Watergate and stagflation in the US and industrial unrest and the rise of the far right in the UK made “crisis” an everyday word. Many responded by seeking solace in a soundtrack and style evoking a romanticized past.
In the UK, some youths withdrew into the sanctuary of rock subcultures rooted in prior decades. Teddy boys and rockabillies were kids reimagining a time-warped 1950s, while neo mods and skinheads recreated styles from the ‘60s. Even punks, so often stereotyped as revolutionary and inventive, were fundamentally retro, piecing together bits and pieces from other subcultures alongside their own spectacular additions. Within these worlds, the music of choice enabled partial retreat from the harsh social realities of the present, a temporary hedonistic release from the hardships of unemployment and dire job prospects.
A parallel played out in the mainstream pop world as well, with the charts dominated by sounds that aligned with idealized retro images shown on screens big and small, e.g., Randal Kleiser’s 1978 pop musical, Grease, and Garry Marshall’s sitcom, Happy Days (1974). Even prog-pop bands renowned for their sonic innovations periodically took the retro route, e.g., ELO with “Roll Over Beethoven” (1972), 10cc with “Donna” (1972), and Queen with “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (1979).
Retro pop syndrome is just as prevalent today as it was in the 1970s. Indeed, the technological revolution has made it more pervasive; our entire musical past is readily available at our fingertips. Now, potential artists no longer have to grow up listening to a limited repertoire of artists and styles, but have easy access to a vast array of both, resulting in the kind of creative melanges and unlikely hybrids one hears in recent pop and rock.
Some, like Ariel Pink and Guided by Voices, also show nostalgia for the production techniques of old, reacting against the processed perfection that technology has ushered in. Others, like the Lemon Twigs, strike a compromise, mastering high-quality sounds while still using vintage equipment in their recording process.
As Simon Reynolds indicates, our desire for retro music correlates with our displeasure with contemporary offerings. “They don’t make music like they used to” is a platitude all young people hear from their elders; it speaks to how tastes are entrenched in time. For young people like the Lemon Twigs and their young “Twiglet” fans, this sentiment has also been adopted, their retro leanings processed into an identity that separates them from the mainstream masses. For them, retro pop is like rockabilly was for some kids in the 1970s: a subcultural club for the select few where a mythologized past can be played out as an illusion of the present. The D’Addario brothers, kitted out in their vintage gear, appeal to similar pockets of indie youth, allowing the tacitly old to be born anew.
Often fellow musicians and/or music aficionados, these indie kids relish the journey into rock history the Twigs take them on, their discoveries providing pleasure treasure they can then share with fellow curiosity hunters. The Lemon Twigs thus serve multiple generations in similar yet different ways, but to equal acclaim, providing sustenance for both the aging and what Pete Shelley, in the Buzzcocks’ song “Nostalgia“, once called “an age yet to come.”
Going retro does not come without hazards, though. There is a fine line between subtle or ironic referencing and crass revivalism. When the latter dominates, a band that looks backward can lose its place in the present. Artists who celebrate and embody the virtues of past music-making may garner our respect, but if they merely replicate that past, then pastiche can lurch into plagiarism. At this point, their acts of synthesis lack a thesis and raison d’être.
Critics have leveled such charges at the Lemon Twigs, but to my ears and eyes, the brothers maintain their artistic essence and integrity by taking each source to new places in often multiple ways. Every reference point is accompanied by an unexpected deviation, a familiar melody or chord sequence twisted and turned into uncharted territory.
The Lemon Twigs’ Stew of Sources
To claim that the Lemon Twigs tap into the popular music of the 1960s and ‘70s is only half true, as there are few signs of those decades’ dominant genres, such as soul, disco, funk, or punk. Many others are channeled, though, most learned from the brothers listening to their parents’ record collection. Dad Ronnie had once been an active musician, too, and his love of the Beatles as apparent in his recordings as his sons’. Besides the Fab Four’s brand of beat and psychedelic pop, Brian and Michael were introduced to baroque pop, power pop, glam rock, glitter pop, soft rock, and folk by their parents. Also, a spell in musical theater while adolescents acquainted them with Broadway musicals, which led them down paths to various iterations of British progressive and art pop.
All of these genres seep into the Lemon Twigs’ sound, and listeners are implicitly invited to play a game of “spot the references”. Each song keeps your fingers on the buzzers, “Corner of My Eye” evoking Paul McCartney and the Everly Brothers, “Any Time of Day” Todd Rundgren and the Carpenters, “When Winter Comes Around” Simon and Garfunkle and James Taylor, “What Happens to a Heart” the Bee Gees and Barry Manilow, and “What You Were Doing” the Byrds, Big Star, and Badfinger. For example, listen for the influences in the Lemon Twigs’ “What You Were Doing“.
The skill with which the D’Addario brothers create these perfectly cut diamonds from this array of treasures has one imagining the discussions they must have during songwriting, arranging, and production sessions: “Let’s add some Roy Wood strings there,” “A little Sparks keyboards would work well here,” “Let’s switch this up from Left Banke baroque to Raspberries power pop in the middle eight,” “Yeah, and maybe add some Queen vocals on the last bar.”
If the Lemon Twigs’ musicianship was not always so accomplished, the harmonized vocals so quintessentially brotherly, the melodies so exquisite, and the arrangements so attentive to maintaining space amidst the layering, the whole house of cards could fall into disarray. But like the best stews, the quality comes from the ingredients and the amount of seasoning added to the pot.
Among the many fields of expertise on display, it is in the production, mostly courtesy of younger brother Michael, where excellence is most notably reached. This should not be surprising considering how much the boys have listened to the music of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, bands elevated in the pop canon by genius knob-twiddlers George Martin and Brian Wilson, respectively.
Retro Immersing with The Lemon Twigs
While it is not uncommon for bands to be influenced by the music of prior eras, the Lemon Twigs commit themselves so thoroughly that the exercise becomes their brand identifier. Even beyond ensuring their sound, equipment, and production methods align with those used by their heroes, Brian and Michael coordinate their visuals and gestures accordingly.
Such immersion could make for disturbingly obsessive tendencies were it not for the self-deprecating humor employed in the Lemon Twigs’ style choices. Their penchant for vintage clothes is conspicuous, endearing them to many who love their videos and performances. However, the specific garments are as much geek as chic.
Most young retro dressers navigate past the mainstream items of their chosen era to find the cooler ones, but the D’Addario brothers ironically invert that process. They wear oversized collared dress shirts, ringer tees with raglan sleeves, sleeveless V-neck sweaters, and blazers. This is the kind of look one would see on The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family rather than on the hip glam, glitter, or psychedelic stars of the early ‘70s. Even when attempting an iconic rock look and pose, as Michael does in “The One” video, his feather-cut hair, bottle-blond dye job, bright red lipstick, and brighter blush are charmingly off, their application more shoddy than Ziggy’s.
Such casual amateurism indicates the boys’ prioritization of music over image, as well as the self-reflective wit they bring to their retro posturing. Twiglets of all ages appreciate this, championing the band as funny and adorable more than as hip or trendy.
Should fans miss the humor, the D’Addarios add gestures of period parody to ram the point home, Michael strutting and waving his arms around in “The One” like a camp(er) Mick Jagger. In this video and others, retro equipment is used for the filming, and the tape is then edited with jump cuts, evoking the kind of fun and frivolity one finds in old Beatles and Monkees films. The results are especially apparent in the wacky and wonderful clip for their 2024 single, “They Don’t Know How to Fall in Place” ().
Although both are former child actors, it is Michael, more than Brian, who brings the physical humor to such videos. His whimsical pouts and scissor kick leaps are now ubiquitous features of the band’s (stage) presence and personality.
The Lemon Twigs’ Days of Future Past
Retro pop is all the rage nowadays and not just in the indie margins. Entering the time machine, various artists have been helping maintain a strong 20th-century presence on contemporary charts. Lizzo channels ‘60s soul, Harry Styles ‘70s SoCal rock, the Weeknd ‘80s synth pop, and Olivia Rodrigo ‘90s pop punk. All implicitly suggest that music from their generation is inferior to that of former ones, that melody, particularly, has been sacrificed on the altar of robotic precision technology.
Many recent indie pop and rock acts appear to share a similar sentiment. Around the Lemon Twigs’ orbit in New York, Cut Worms, Weyes Blood, Tchotchke, Josephine Network, Brower, Geese, and SUO are all currently plumbing the depths of past pop pleasures. Micro-retro scenes have also popped up elsewhere, such as in Kansas City, where the Whiffs, Shy Boys, and Fullbloods trace their roots in ways that innovate rather than simply revive.
The Lemon Twigs further straddle past and present by collaborating with fellow retro contemporaries, such as Foxygen, Uni Boys, and Tchotchke, while also occasionally performing or co-producing with their more established heroes, including Todd Rundgren, Jody Stephens (from Big Star), and Sean Ono Lennon.
Bands like the Lemon Twigs will always divide opinion, separating those who demand originality, as if such a thing were possible, from those happy to see and hear new bands preserving and perpetuating our rich pop heritage. As the current curators-in-chief, the Lemon Twigs continue to create the new out of their passion for the old.
When not on the road, the brothers are usually holed up in their studio, writing, playing, producing, and engineering. Long promised, the first of their solo projects has just been released, Brian’s Till the Morning, co-produced with his brother. It includes 11 more of the kind of polished retro gems we have become accustomed to from one of this century’s finest pop bands.