Musical pastiche can be dangerous. When you go beyond having influences to embodying those influences, artists can easily slip into self-parody. You need spectacularly good songs to pull it off. The Lemon Twigs, a US duo who have often been dangerously close to mere cosplay – perpetually caught in a time vortex where they get sent back to 1967 every time they reach 1976 – have managed it with historic aplomb on their fourth album.
The biggest touchstone is the beautifully harmonised existential dread of the Beach Boys post-Pet Sounds flop era: rarely has stark despair (one song is called Every Day Is the Worst Day of My Life) sounded so lovely. There’s also pre-disco Bee Gees, Byrds psych-pop, Simon & Garfunkel and James Taylor’s sturdy craft, and a touch of classic rock on What You Were Doing (which also recalls Teenage Fanclub, and their own harking back).
The songwriting never dips below classic. The teen stars of the late 50s would have coveted the midtempo ballad Any Time of Day, with its ripe key change; What Happens to a Heart’s period-detail harpsichord builds to an orchestral chorus that puts it among the most gloriously histrionic breakup songs ever written; In My Head reminds us that in an age of copyright lawsuits, there are still so many new and perfect songs waiting to be written. In love with the past but making the present so bright, the Lemon Twigs are, in the end, timeless.