“When you have brothers singing, you have an instrument no one else can buy.”
- Noel Gallagher, talking about The Bee Gees
The above quote and a glowing recommendation from a fellow writer whose musical judgement is typically excellent led me to this album… this wonderful, aggravating, divisive album.
The Lemon Twigs are brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario, singers and multi-instrumentalists who between them play guitar, bass, keys and drums, as well as handling production and mixing. They are genuine artisans with an inimitable sibling connection, as well as a shared history as musical theater performers, a background that often influences their vocal approaches and arrangements.
Everything Harmony was the duo’s fourth studio album, regarded by some as a breakthrough of sorts, arriving as it did on the heels of a well-received March 2023 gig backing Colin Blunstone of the Zombies at SXSW. Going into my first listen, I’d seen the Twigs described variously as power pop, glam rock, art rock, and jangle pop. Given that the brothers are avowed fans of The Beatles, arguably the point of origin for all of the above, this makes good sense, even if that set of subgenres covers a considerable stylistic range.
And then I listened, and had one of the most extreme love/hate reactions I’ve ever had to an album, more than once experiencing both in response to the same song. There’s no question that this music has been beautifully crafted; it’s full of sonic detail and thoughtful, often creative arrangements. When everything comes together and it works, it’s thrilling in its emulation and amplification of ’70s-era harmony-heavy pop-rock… it’s just that, as stylized and out there as the Twigs tend to be, when the elements don’t quite jell, the results can veer quickly from fabulous to train wreck.
The first four tracks capture all of this. “When Winter Comes Around” opens the album with thrummy acoustic picking and warbly lead vocals, a pensive slice of folk-rock that briefly explodes into a cathedral of sound before falling back and wafting away on the breeze. It’s airy and earnest but, beyond that one moment of drama, fails to make much of an impression. “In My Head,” by contrast, is classicist, exuberant power pop: as the candy-floss harmonies rise and fall over urgently jangling guitars, it’s like Big Star mixed with a dozen Pixy Stix.
Next up, “Corner Of My Eye” is a gentle, delicate number with lead vocals operatic enough to earn a nod from Freddie Mercury. Fully dissipating any momentum generated by track two, “Any Time Of Day” is a ponderous, melodramatic piano number with a seriously overcooked vocal arrangement; think “the Bee Gees sing Barry Manilow.”
The odd choices only get odder in the second third of Everything Harmony. “What You Were Doing” arrives brimming with jangle-licious brio and Brian Wilson harmonies until you realize you’re listening to an anthem sung by a stalker (“I wanna know / Just where you are”). Leaning into its own weirdness, the song devolves into an echoey bridge/outro and then poof, it’s gone. Next, “I Don’t Belong To Me” offers a pretty piano-and-vocals ballad about drowning, that splices in a trumpet solo near the end for no perceptible reason. Say what?
The shimmering, gorgeous “Every Day Is The Worst Day Of My Life” epitomizes my “love it-and-hate-it” reaction to this album. The production and arrangement are superb, pushing the song into the harmonic heights again and again until it finishes with a super-cool vocal round. The lyric, though—which consists entirely of the title chanted over and over again—feels like the pinnacle of self-pitying privileged-white-boy mopiness. The net result is a superb piece of musical craftsmanship that’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. (Maybe it was intended ironically? I can only hope.)
Big strings and operatic vocals meet on “What Happens To A Heart,” which gives off distinct “God Only Knows” vibes at times. The following “Still It’s Not Enough” slumbers along in gauzy prettiness until strings lift it into the sky as the brothers’ voices overlay into another spectacular vocal round-robin… on a song in which the acquisitive narrator is never satisfied because “nothing was ever enough.”
In the final act, the woe-is-me ballad “Born To Be Lonely” builds and flows, flares and recedes like a show tune, animated by a sort of off-kilter Broadway flair. Then late highlight “Ghost Run Free” delivers bouncy power pop lit up by a sunny chorus supported with limber, driving bass and shimmery, glammy guitars. The title track delivers the band’s mission statement—“And I like the song when it’s dreamy / And I’m so obsessed when it’s everything harmony”—before delving into vocal gymnastics on the chorus that suggest the bros have listened to a lot of REM. Closer “New To Me” is a kind of resigned breakup song set to acoustic guitar and complex harmonies; it has potential, but ends up entirely too affected for this listener.
Everything Harmony received a number of rapturous reviews, earning an 87 out of 100 on Metacritic with more than one writer commenting on how the album’s vibe echoes the “beautiful despair” of post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys. Here’s the thing: that shit drives me crazy. To me there’s nothing the least bit romantic or attractive about self-pity; it’s a nauseating spiral of self-absorption that accomplishes nothing.
Everything Harmony is an often-gorgeous, meticulously produced and arranged album whose lyrics made me roll my eyes so many times that I may be sore tomorrow. This one gets an A- for production, vocal quality and melodic sensibilities, a C for overdone quirkiness, and a D for lyrics. We’ve all had our moments of mopiness, to be sure—but there’s a fine line between sad and insufferable.