Live at The Brudenell Social Club 11th September 2024
The Lemon Twigs are epic crate diggers, genned up on minutiae and able to turn out music that a bygone era would recognise. Their love for the sixties and guitar pop glows from every part of them. Even when they introduce a Rolling Stones cover, it isn’t anything any average person would recognise and they manage to have a laugh about who the song might be stolen from. Geekazoids!
The music is a lovely recreation of the melodies spread by the British invasion and turned into an American artform. There’s a stack of Beach Boys harmony in there, a tiny bit of Yacht Rock and nods to bands influenced by the same (Teenage Fanclub, Todd Rundgren) but I’m reminded most strongly of the Hollies in the guitar work, melodies and harmony. All this shines in the records and I’d hoped this was one of those bands that would be loose enough to let things stretch and reshape into a different live experience but it felt like a fairly straight run through.
Brothers Brian and Michael are quite a pair with their hair cuts projecting a Dee Dee and Johnny image or something from Peter Bagge’s comic, ‘Hate’. In chat they are affable, trading off the odd geeky comment, exchanging smiles and laughing at a fellow obsessive in the audience who, when they lose a guitar pick, offers up a Dunlop .73mm pick by name. They trade vocals for the songs each has written and hunker into the mic to get the detail right. Alongside them Danny Ayala provides bass on an unusual Hoffner, an instrument redolent of Paul McCartney and I doubt that’s a coincidence.
Wisely opening on the lovely ‘My Golden Years’ single from the recent album, they set the scene for eighty minutes of nigh perfect pop; just a bit too polished for my tastes. I want to hear things a little different live or get a different buzz. I’m at odds with the audience, who were reverent and largely immobile, though responsive. The venue was sold out and everyone there was rapt. Bookending the main set, another recent single, ‘How Can I Love Her More’ has an immaculate tune and absolutely lovely harmonies. A lengthy encore pays tribute to the Beach Boys with ‘You’re So Good To Me’ and they play it straight. In fact they’ve played the whole evening straight – a note-perfect simulacrum of an imaginary sixties, revelling in the lovely sound they make with a smile and a wink.
