Brian D’Addario - Til The Morning Review
Brian D’Addario’s solo debut is a heartfelt, sun-drenched ode to ’60s pop - equal parts charming, nostalgic, and meticulously crafted.
Brian D’Addario, the eldest of the brotherly run songwriting duo, ‘The Lemon Twigs’, is set to release his debut solo album ‘Til The Morning’ on the 20th of this month. The album features renowned LA poet Stephen Kalinich as a collaborator, who famously worked with The Beach Boys, and more specifically Brian Wilson in the sixties. The Lemon Twigs’ music is very much
known for its ‘sixties worship’ style and genre, some love it some hate it. If you love it, you’ll absolutely fucking adore Brian’s latest creation. If you hate it, well, yeah.
The album is packed with Bubble Gum-y melodies and rhythms, complex vocal harmonies, twangy guitars and stories of love, loss and anxiety. It isn’t hard to tell that there was a lot of love and effort put into the making of the album, and I feel like you really get a good hard look into the brain of Brian D’Addario with each and every song. His direct influences of pop star love ballads can be pulled from almost every track. Each and every song is extremely easy to listen to and is very inoffensive to the average listener of music, particularly new music. You could play this album anywhere and I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it being on.
The production of the album is so very warm and cosy; I can picture myself at university laying on the grass on a summer’s day in Surrey, surrounded by friends with artsy outfits, feeling like our generation doesn’t have anything to latch onto, and wishing we were in a park in London or New York in the sixties on an even hotter summers day, being all cool and chilled out and all. D’Addario’s debut is so reminiscent of said time in music history, there’s moments it’s hard to believe it will be released for the first time this spring. I have a love/hate relationship with this style as I envy the songwriting abilities, whereas at the same time it baffles me that we still have songwriters releasing music that sounds identical to that of fifty or sixty years ago. Don’t fix it if it hasn’t broken yet I suppose. The vocal melodies on songs such as the title track ‘Til The Morning’ and ‘Nothing On My Mind’ I find to be extremely outdated, repetitive and somewhat jarring, but at the same time the songs are beautifully executed. The intention Brian had in crafting this album’s sound is extremely vivid and masterfully done.
All in all I think Til The Morning has a song or two for everyone, it takes you through a series of moods over its course, with great pacing and tracklisting. The drums, I have to say, are a highlight for me personally, I just love how they sound from one song to another. And that strange little slide guitar bit in the first pre-verse of ‘Flash in the Pan’, I could listen to on repeat. Little tiny moments like that in any song or album make it worth a listen for me!