{"id":3382,"date":"2012-07-19T11:19:07","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T15:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=3382"},"modified":"2012-08-10T12:46:43","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T16:46:43","slug":"review-twin-shadow-confess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/review-twin-shadow-confess\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Twin Shadow’s Confess Explores the Art of Escape"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The act of riding a motorcycle puts before safety and stability, impulse, adrenaline and image. For George Lewis Jr., it\u2019s a vehicle not for traversing physical spaces so much as those of the mind, and it seems to work best when ridden solo. The ride is then somewhat egotistical and nihilistic, and that combination apparently makes quite a good muse for a pop album.<\/p>\n

Confess<\/em>, Lewis\u2019s second LP under the Twin Shadow moniker, owes its existence to early morning motorcycle rides in Los Angeles, which helped the Dominican-born songwriter to reach some nirvana-like state. The album contains, at points, hints of such furious energy as translated into unabashedly eighties-influenced pop. It\u2019s the same translation from energy to music that Bruce Springsteen engages in, if the boss had had a musical aesthetic that was more along the lines The Police or Flock of Seagulls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been working on making it start,\u201d sings Lewis in \u201cRun My Heart,\u201d reminding me just a little of Springsteen\u2019s famous line, \u201ccan\u2019t start a fire without a spark.\u201d The same reverence for passion inhabits this album, and that is perhaps what Lewis confesses more than anything else. Love, he maintains, cannot be analyzed or forced into existence, only recognized, as the confident declaration of the chorus makes clear. \u201cThis isn\u2019t love,\u201d he cries with a runaway\u2019s passion.<\/p>\n

Twin Shadow pulls off the eighties New Wave musical aesthetic so well because his music gets to the fundamental sentiment of the music that I readily associate with that decade, and twists it into something new. He\u2019s not running so far away so much as accepting escape as his permanent state. Then, the album deals with the real-world consequences of such an outlook. The song, \u201cBeg for the Night,\u201d is not a description but a command to the listener, or the song\u2019s \u201cother,\u201d to come to his side. \u201cCome, beg for the night \/ feel a bit more,\u201d the song opens. The advantages of doing such are captured by the swelling synths which build as the song goes on.<\/p>\n

For those of us who spend our lives in mundane, unexposed comfort as we roll down life\u2019s road, it\u2019s hard not to admire those who seem to have a rearranged hierarchy of needs, such that \u201cexperience\u201d comes before everything else. Most of us don\u2019t choose this path because to truly do so requires a disregard for stability, and, in turn, to the emotional needs of others. \u201cBefore the night is through I\u2019ll say three words \/ I\u2019ll probably mean the first two and regret the third \/ I don\u2019t care,\u201d as he says in the song titled after that last line. Like the tribal grunts in the background seem to emphasize, he\u2019s seeking a more visceral fulfillment that modern life seldom offers, except perhaps when strapped to two wheels and an engine, flying down the LA blacktop.<\/p>\n

The songs of\u00a0Confess<\/em>\u00a0express little regard or tolerance for people who haven\u2019t experienced the same beatnik enlightenment, and in fact he seems to forget that peace because of a square individual in the song \u201cPatience.\u201d He sings repeatedly in that song, \u201cPatiently waiting for you to give up everything and say just what you mean,\u201d seeming to indicate a distinct anxiety and impatience with this person who \u201canalyzes every kiss.\u201d After all, Lewis has already established himself as the person who knows \u201cit\u2019s absurd to cherish every kiss,\u201d in \u201cBeg For The Night.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album ends on a hidden track track, \u201cMirror In The Dark,\u201d which seems to be hidden less for lack of quality, and more for the just how dark it\u2019s message is. Lewis acknowledges what lies behind his love of being in motion. \u201cYou can learn to be still but we will always be broken.\u201d In stillness, he\u2019s forced to confront himself, and only in the quick, all-consuming rush of high-speed indulgence does he escape his brokeness. Thus his songs lack any semblance of \u201cstillness,\u201d and are instead replete with track-filling, rush-inducing synthesizers, guitars and programmed drums. With a less passionate artist, such sounds might come off as cheap influence, but Lewis owns the eighties aesthetic as if it the entire decade of music existed to be the vehicle for his discontent.<\/p>\n

____
\nThis article first appeared at Pretty Much Amazing<\/a>, a fairly OK music website.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The act of riding a motorcycle puts before safety and stability, impulse, adrenaline and image. For George Lewis Jr., it\u2019s a vehicle not for traversing physical spaces so much as those of the mind, and it seems to work best when ridden solo. The ride is then somewhat egotistical and nihilistic, and that combination apparently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,4,220],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3382"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3390,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions\/3390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}