LEMON TWIGS - Look For Your Mind!

It's easy to hide behind the term "derivative" to describe a Lemon Twigs album. Easy, but decidedly dishonest, especially towards brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario, who have never hidden their unhealthy and fruitful passion for that song form called pop, a term that marked a cultural and semantic revolution. And it's hardly a bloodless word in the hands of these two skilled craftsmen, authors of a power-pop as sugary as it is natural. A concentrate of melody and arrangement where the simplicity is only apparent.

With the new album "Look For Your Mind!", the Lemon Twigs lay their cards on the table in the manner of Todd Rundgren and the band Utopia at the time of "Deface The Music", a title the brilliant producer chose not by chance, given its double meaning of "disfiguring music" and "facing the risk" - and that's exactly what the American duo does here without fear and with an authenticity that once again convinces. For the first time, the band that accompanies the duo on tour was involved in the recordings, a choice that exposes the songs to a simplification that will work even better in a live setting, and this is one of the reasons why "Look For Your Mind!" at times sounds more like an old radio/TV broadcast than a proper album, as if the band wanted to underline the spontaneous, unaffected nature of their songs.

When Brian D'Addario states in "Bring You Down" that "they'll steal my job and give it to a machine", he's not only pointing the finger at the transformation of the world of work but also issuing a warning about artificial intelligence, and the fact that this happens in the album's happiest, most unhinged song (a surf-rock number with Beach Boys-style harmonies) is no coincidence. To the graceful, carefree sounds reminiscent of the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" era, "Gather Round" entrusts the Lemon Twigs with a deep reflection on social divisions and the political-cultural tension of our times: don't worry, the D'Addario brothers haven't become politically engaged, but true to their post-adolescent identity, their music isn't immune to deeper reflection. The songs still talk about boys and girls ("2 or 3"), or about tenderness and feelings with the same candour as the early Beach Boys (the splendid "Mean To Me"), before entrusting one last question about the future to the psychedelic flow of distorted guitars, vintage organs and Yeats' verses recited by their father Ronnie on "Your True Enemy".

At this point it's clear that the superficiality with which many will dismiss "Look For Your Mind" by simply labelling it a retro album is more backward-looking and reactionary than the record's creative content, a project that still knows how to speak to its own generation. It doesn't matter if the chosen language is already familiar - the title track might sound to you like a jangle-pop version of the Beatles' "Rain", and "Nothin' But You" is undoubtedly nothing more than a new-wave-flavoured reading of Big Star, and it hardly matters that "My Heart Is In Your Hands Tonight" turns the clock back to the very early '60s: what counts in the end is the band's ability to create solutions that are simple yet elaborate, like the genuine Zombies-style folk-pop of "I Hurt You" or the brilliant riff of "Fire And Gold", which will delight Who fans.

The Lemon Twigs' songs are perfect pieces of craftsmanship ("Joy") that, aside from a few deliberately laid-back moments ("I Just Can't Get Over Losing You", "Yeah I Do"), no artificial intelligence will ever be able to match.

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25/05/2026