Published on Dec 3, 2001
So my twelve-year-old daughter – having long since given the
Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC their five minutes of fame in her
discman – comes to me and says, “Dad, you’ve got to hear this.” I
pick up the CD case as she fiddles with the player, thinking to
myself, “Oh, God, not another pretty-boy pop act. For crying out
loud, these guys are twins who look like Abercrombie models, and I
bet their music is just about exactly THAT good. No, please, don’t
hit ‘play,’ don’t make me listen… aaaaiiiieeeeoooooooohhhh.
“
Hey. Wait a minute. “Could you play that again?”
Forget everything you thought you knew about the long, mostly
sad history of cute-brother acts. Because while identical twins
Evan and Jaron Lowenstein may be easy on the eyes, they have this
startling fact working in their favor: they’re GOOD. Quite good, in
fact — the most obviously gifted pair of singer-songwriters I’ve
come across in awhile. Both write, both sing, both play just about
everything on this album but the drums, and both craft songs filled
with smart hooks, searching lyrics and clever arrangements
embracing everything from tuba accents to raw electric
chord-crunching.
This particular set of songs appears to reflect Evan and Jaron’s
evolution from a coffeehouse act (their first indie CD featured the
two of them live and acoustic) to major-label bonus babies (their
first, largely unnoticed 1998 Island Records disc We
‘ve Never Heard Of You, Either), to yet another casualty of
the media merger wars. Their subsequent resurfacing with Columbia
left them with a sense of dislocation and skepticism that lurks
everywhere in these cuts, notably on the kickoff “Outerspace,” in
which they step back from their arrival as a band and wonder if any
of it’s really real, as the music – first distant and quiet, then
immediate and thundering – deftly evokes their state of mind.
“Ready Or Not,” however, suggests they are going to embrace the
moment for what it is. Beginning with a melody that sticks like
glue, the cut builds nicely with layered guitars and terrific
harmony vocals from the brothers, with the finishing touches –
heavily reverbed guitar flourishes and effects — supplied by the
tune’s co-writer, Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson. (Note to Dan:
Write with others more often. This cut, co-written with brother
Evan, is better than 95 percent of the tunes you wrote solo for the
last Semisonic album.)
Arriving as track number three, The Big Single is a monster. I
can just see the omnivorous grin on the A&R guy’s face as he
listens to an early mix of “Crazy For This Girl”… a pretty
piano-and-viola intro shifts quickly to beefy guitars over an
impossibly catchy chorus about “the girl.” You know, the one you’re
nuts about who doesn’t even know you exist… or does she?
It’s a universal moment; girls love it, guys love it, everybody
loves it, because Evan and Jaron used it as the foundation for a
classic piece of pop-rock songcraft that mixes melody and muscle in
just the right proportions. It’s the rare “home run” cut that
actually earns the overplaying radio has given it.
Probably the most amazing thing about this album is listening to
Evan and Jaron singing harmony together on these cuts. Most times
when you hear stacked harmonies where the voices sound virtually
identical, it’s a studio effect achieved by multi-tracking the lead
singer’s vocals. These guys just sing it out side by side, playing
off each other again and again, their voices so similar and
complementary that it all sounds live.
The rest of the album brims with strong moments. “Done Hangin’
On Maybe” rides far on a great hook and strong lyric, committing
only the sin of fading out too soon. This song needs another verse,
or at least an extended outro! “The Distance” captures a reflective
mood well without ever getting maudlin, while its upbeat
counterpart “Pick Up The Phone” examines the same kind of situation
from a different angle. “From My Head To My Heart” and “Make It
Better” are sturdy, smartly arranged four-minute slices of melodic
rock that suggest the brothers can pull this sort of thing off any
time they feel like it.
And that’s the ultimate message I take from this disc: Evan and
Jaron know what they’re doing. It may not sound like the hugest
compliment in the world, but for a pair of twenty-six-year-olds
who’ve likely had to battle again and again just to be taken
seriously as musicians, it says a lot. Don’t prejudge the way I
almost did — these guys have got real talent, and this album gives
every indication they are destined for more good things in the
future.