Music Review: Mr Twin Sister

“What ever happened to poor, dear me? Never see that face again.” With that, Mr Twin Sister announces their rebirth as a creative entity. The band formerly known as Twin Sister returns with their new self-titled album, which heralds a major sonic change along with a different name. And what a welcome change it is. Mr Twin Sister is easily the band’s best release, as well as a contender for one of the best albums of the year.

Mr Twin Sister has always been a solidly good band, even with this great new addition to their output. Their 2010 song “All Around and Away We Go” was one of the best songs of that year; a luxurious disco fantasia that painted the ‘70s as a purple and gold haze of hedonism and lightness. If that sounds florid, it is. The song was, and still is, a pure head rush that almost coerces you to groove. The rest of the former Twin Sister’s output leaned towards more navel-gazing dream-pop, not unlike their contemporaries, such as Beach House (but Beach House did it better). However, this new album is a uniquely singular work that feels both current and out of place in equal measures.

Mr Twin Sister is anchored by a trifecta of perfect songs, with the rest of the eight-song, thirty-seven minute album shading in the atmosphere and musical texture. The first, “In the House of Yes,” is superficially the most similar to “All Around and Away We Go” with its disco reverie. This new song is sonically deeper, with swirling strings and arpeggiatic rises and falls that give the song a sense of high drama. You could picture it as the score of a perfume commercial, and I mean that in the best possible way. Lead singer Andrea Estella has a new heft to her voice that recalls the androgynous mystique of Grace Jones; she owns both this song and the album. The second song, “Blush,” is a torch ballad that just lets Estella simply vamp over a lounge-like beat as if it were the James Bond theme song that never was. It is lush, understated and sensual in ways that other artists this year (Sam Smith or Mapei, for example) have only pretended to be.

The third and best track is “Out of the Dark,” whose mantra-like refrain led off this review. It’s a complete left field departure from the first two highlights and sounds like nothing else in their catalog. All three of these songs are dramatic, but “Out of the Dark” makes common pleasures like dancing and going to the club seem like dangerous matters of life and death. Sonically, it feels more muscular than anything Mr Twin Sister has done before—sort of a more melodic Kraftwerk with a pinch of Nine Inch Nails if Trent Reznor had grown up in Studio 54.

If the rest of the album cannot measure up to those three songs, let it not stand as a condemnation of the rest’s quality but a proclamation of the excellence of the centerpieces. There is still much to love about the rest of Mr Twin Sister: the sly joking of “Rude Boy” or backup singer Eric Cardona’s wonderfully shrieking voice or the album’s fantastic cohesion. But, the true brilliance of “In the House of Yes,” “Blush” and “Out of the Dark” is the real reason to take this new detour with Mr Twin Sister.