Lemon Twigs at Electric Brixton

The Electric Brixton is positively sweltering tonight, heaving with The Lemon Twigs fans who have comfortably sold out the South London show. The two multi-instrumentalist brothers, Brian and Michael D’Addario from Long Island New York, are touring A Dream Is All We Know, released in May earlier this year. Their latest album is further proof that the duo have a knack for creating perfect songs that could easily have been released 50 years earlier than today.

The band open with the lead single My Golden Years, a melodic 1960s-influenced tune complete with all the sublime harmonies they do so well. Although The Lemon Twigs are a rock act, their music demands a certain kind of attention that doesn’t see the crowd throwing themselves around a great deal, and in fact, everyone is standing stone still.

Is it too far to say that the duo’s fans are probably, usually, quite geeky when it comes to sound? The band are famed for their analogue techniques and the way they’re able to create intricate and original music that also resembles a Beach Boys b-side has earned them a die-hard following, and you can feel the awe radiating in Brixton Electric tonight.

The new tunes like Sweet Vibration and Church Bells play well to the crowd, while older tracks like The One and In My Head are welcome breaks of familiarity. Prove to You is a definite highlight, with its anthemic pleading chorus, as well as the new album track Rock On (Over and Over), which is performed with a welcome raucous edge we don’t always see with this band.

Brian and Michael have great stage presence together, and they’re not afraid to interact with each other and crack jokes in between songs. As many music fans know all too well, having two brothers in a group doesn’t always mean things will be relaxed and plain sailing.

Just one brother, Brian, comes back for the encore initially, to perform a delicate acoustic set before the rest of the band comes back to join him. The group closes with a faultless cover of The Beach Boys classic Good Vibrations, met with notable adulation.

The Lemon Twigs now have a music career spanning almost ten years, but they’re both still only in their late 20s. With so much talent and so much accomplished already, it’s hard to imagine where the next decade will take them, but they’ll probably need a bigger venue the next time they visit London.

Hannah Broughton
Photos: Courtesy of Lemon Twigs

For further information and future events visit Lemon Twigs’s website here.

Watch the video for My Golden Years here: