The D’Addario brothers, aka The Lemon Twigs, are no strangers when it comes to hurtling listeners back to a bygone era. They are master purveyors of a beguiling ‘Mersey Beach’ sound that captures their West-Coast-meets-British-Beat 60s hybrid and in bringing the spirit of San Fran hippiedom into the contemporary space.
Despite being a solo outing, Till The Morning continues down that same path. Written and recorded in multiple studios and states, it is not intended as a sign of any fraternal fallout ripped from rock’s Book of Cliches. On the contrary, Brian’s brother, and fellow multi-instrumentalist, Michael, produced some of this album and pops up frequently too. The vibes are good, and relations are intact.
Instead, this is presented as an opportunity for Brian to indulge his ‘baroque-country’ fantasies–the sound of which Michael is said to be particularly averse. In truth, two tracks aside, this is about as honky-tonk as your average Slipknot setlist. Most frequently, Till The Morning offers approximations of familiar Lemon Twigs’ terrain by way of warm-hearted, tender folk and jangly, Byrdsian pop.
In particular, the two songs written in collaboration with celebrated LA poet Stephen Kalinich – who also co-wrote The Beach Boys’ tracks ‘Little Bird’ and ‘Be Still’ – could rest their romantic heads on anything you’d find on the Twigs’ beautiful, ballad-heavy 2023 release, Everything Harmony. Both ‘Song for Everyone’ and ‘What You Are Is Beautiful’ are framed by Brian’s sweet, soaring falsetto and deft way with a nylon-strung guitar.
The countryfied elements crop up on the forlorn, existential sway of ‘One Day I’m Coming Home’ and the jaunty strum of ‘This Summer’. Both feature lashings of gorgeous pedal steel that not only fit the mood but elevate it too. ‘One Day I’m Coming Home’, in particular, is a quite brilliant addition to the D’Addario canon and one of the album’s out-and-out standouts.
Elsewhere, the sunshine chug of ‘Nothing on My Mind’ and ‘Flash in the Pan’ most closely evoke the last Lemon Twigs album, A Dream Is All We Know. The latter alternates between some terrific ascending-and-descending bassline runs and an instrumental ‘harpsichord’ bridge (actually, the sound of a piano recorded at half speed) that are impossible to resist, while the former is a catchy splash of six-string heaven.
The strongest cut, however, is penultimate track ‘Useless Tears’. With lyrics decrying how the super-rich have fostered societal inequality, it finds D’Addario singing, ‘Red despair is blowing through the air/Now it’s burning everywhere/Like the flames of hell’ set to the sort of urgent, yet mournful, string arrangement that would have Eleanor Rigby bawling uncontrollably from her cemetery grave. D’Addario has called it a “real-life Halloween horror song” and it screams hopelessness and frustration. It’s a departure from tested waters, musically, and it’s quite brilliant.
The closing ‘Spirit Without a Home’ is where things get particularly personal. A stately paean to the D’Addario’s late uncle who had endured Alzheimer’s slow cruelty, it hits hard. Particularly at the song’s climax, as the words ‘Did you have to leave so deflated/Fated to a life so far away from your own/Spirit without a home’ ring out.
Not everything here is perfect though. Some tracks cannot help but feel like lesser cousins to those that already sit in the Lemon Twigs catalogue. But to quibble on that would be to miss the point.
Exquisitely crafted, freighted by longing and loss, Till The Morning is the yelp of a lone Lemon Twig bringing offcuts and new stuff as a sidebar to that of his day job. Although it may be devoid of a rollicking, crossover hit, it is a strong reminder that this prodigious creative has ideas to spare and nearly all of them are worth hearing.
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