Everything Harmony

Album review

The fourth studio album by Long Island brother duo Brian and Michael D'Addario—aka The Lemon Twigs—finds them still digging through the crates of the '70s for inspiration. Having already played around with the histrionics and bombastics of Cheap Trick, ELO and Jim Steinman, the two have moved over to a different section. "When Winter Comes Around" is a perfect distillation of John Denver-style singer-songwriter sincerity and immediately uncovers one of the big new revelations this time around: fraternal harmonies. "On previous records, whoever wrote the song might do most, if not all, of the harmonies on their track, but not so much on this one. Our blend is a strength that we tried to exploit as much as possible," Brian D'Addario has said of the record. The melded vocals of "Every Day Is the Worst Day of My Life," mesmerize, while "Corner of My Eye" is so much like an Everly Brothers track it sounds lifted from some lost Felice Bryant archive. "Any Time of Day" nods to the toothy, wholesome balladry of family groups like the Carpenters or the Osmonds and gives Brian in particular a chance to hit a whole new array of high notes. "Sometimes you have to crawl/ To know that gravity is working/ 'Til you're one day walking tall/ And know that nothing is for certain/ And no one can close the curtain," he sings on the track, which the band has said came about over a business deal gone wrong after the were "hired to write material and act in an interactive TV show about an imaginary '70s brother band" for the now-dead streaming service Quibi. "Ghost Run Free," which comes the closest to tapping into the soaring upbeatness of 2020's Songs for the General Public, truly sounds like it should have been the theme to a That Girl-style sitcom. The D'Addarios apply melancholy horns on the ballad "I Don't Belong To Me," sweeping strings to the ambitious title track, and a waltz beat and carousel melody to "Born to Be Lonely." Starry-eyed "What Happens to a Heart," meanwhile, is pure chamber-pop pomp, complete with dreamy pin-up vocals. And when they revisit Badfinger-style power pop—on "What You Were Doing" and the chiming "In My Head"—here, it is whipped-cream-cloud perfection. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz