Twin Sister In Heaven
(Domino Records)
Twin Sister find themselves part of the dream pop revival that briefly went through that bizarre chillwave moment — but while the band found themselves lumped into the trend, there's too much here for that shallow moniker. No, this is dream pop in the classic vein of, well, some other Twins and like groups Stereolab.
In Heaven is a well-produced, inviting album with some wonderful moments spread throughout. In that way, it slots quite well into the indie pop world, and it doesn't make too many waves on the way — except, of course, that lone wave that comes from the album's being a wonderful example of the craft.
The opening moments set out the album's course, lending a degree of predictability to the album. That, however, doesn't count against Twin Sister too much: The laid-back notes of synthesized dream pop joy accented by almost syrupy sweet vocals become the theme, and there's more than enough variation on that theme to keep things interesting through the ten songs (oh, how I wish there were more!)
It's quite remarkable how well the album starts, actually. Bells, electronic drums, and a delicate, graceful vocal line — then, mid-song, some nice vocal harmonies to solidify the quality. It's easy to focus on the early moments of the album, because they set the tone so nicely, but there's more to the album than just those early tracks.
The consistent quality of the tracks on In Heaven is perhaps as important as the blissful moments are individually — but the variety is just as essential to the ticking over as any individual quality on display. Sometimes, a nice lumping of guitar comes striking out, other times, we get some nice square-wave-synthesizer love. It ebbs and flows with stylistic ease, and as a result, the whole thing maintains that relaxed, dreamy sense that really drives it all forward.
It's not often that full-length debuts make good on the promises set out by preliminary press and early recordings. Twin Sister, for their part, have capitalized in no small way. Perhaps they waited just long enough to launch this, because they've avoided the big pitfall that chillwave presented. They could well have been swallowed whole by the trend, but instead, they navigated around it — not that it was necessary, really, but when anything remotely dream pop-derived with synthesizers gets smacked with an already tired label, it becomes incredibly easy to exercise bias.
Twin Sister isn't setting out to clone the greats, and it's far too early to predict whether they'll be among them in the future. But In Heaven certainly does enough to make an initial impact, and on its own, it's hard to ignore.