VIDEO: Twin Shadow - Slow & Castles In The Snow

I just listened to Twin Shadow's Forget for the first time and just felt the rush of something totally fresh and exciting. Played the right thing at the right moment and it's totally won me over instantly. The work of one New York based George Lewis Jr. it reminds me of the multi-membered hydra Gayngs, though doesn't exactly sound like it, but it does share a similar lust for radio sleekness, harkening back to a probable/imagined mid-80's (no one say hypnagogic) NorthWest based US radio station beaming out coke-loaded, hi-gloss fm rock, R&B and soul. This album has traces of all those, just enough to make the Pop really shine out, emboldening chorus hooks with a really assertive and addictive quality. Released on Chris Taylor's Terrible Records it also shares a feel for Grizzly Bear's equally ambitious lush orchestrations, with the music being fleshed and filled out with some expansive harmonies, background tone washes and intricate details. The first half of the record comes off like an English Of Montreal - two ides of eccentricity, one pastoral, rural and one freaked out on the tempo of a city and the excesses of it. If Chillwave has been headed anywhere then it is surely as full a sounding place as this. Tracks like Tether Beat have that same lugubrious pulse, that simultaneous sense of propulsion and euphoric tranquility, but the major progression is the scope of ambition, unshackled from the hermetic glow of the bedroom this is a sound that demands a stage full of musicians to fully replicate and do justice to. It is not the sound of complacency or idle satisfaction.
The vocals are richy and expressively nuanced with some absolutely killer phrasing. Some of the vocal's sound like Sparks, some have Morrissey's disassociated baritone. If he and Wild Nothing got together indie blogs would go nuclear. and the lyrics are pretty special too - the final titular Forget has this cold haunted diamond of a line: "when winter sets in it has a way of crystallising the bad times".

Here's two videos for you; the new clip for Slow and the earlier Castles In The Snow. Both embody represent and illustrate all the above better than any more bewildered ramblings from me.

Here's two videos to sink into and see for yourselves: