The lemon twigs
When not dancing in makeup on top of a van, glam-rocking brothers Brian and Michael D’addario are reviving the art of songwriting and old school production with the Lemon Twigs’ new album Songs for the general public. And with influences ranging from The
“The period’s correct, but when people try to guess our influences, they tend to be wrong.” Brian D’addario, one half of the Lemon Twigs beside his brother Michael, has been hailed for reviving 70s glam rock. Their high camp performances have seen them described as “a Zoomer Darkness” and drawn comparisons to T-rex and the Sweet. It turns out their influences lie elsewhere.
“A lot of glam bands seem to be way more steeped in 50s rock, where the chords are very simple and it’s really about the attitude,” Brian says. “We tend to be more influenced by songwriters.” He’s referring to the likes of Brian Wilson and ELO’S Jeff Lynne, although his songs’ complexity also owes a debt to the brothers’ background in musical theatre. “Our process is so steeped in melodic and harmonic ideas.” He cites their main guitar influences as The Band’s Robbie Robertson, and Alex Chilton from cult power pop heroes Big Star, adding that his favourite guitarist is singersongwriter Richard Thompson. “To me if there were gonna be any comparisons, as far as how we were gonna produce it, we were thinking of records like John Cale’s records and Cat Stevens.”
Each brother has a distinctive approach. “Michael’s very instinctive and very rock ’n’ roll the way he approaches his guitar parts,” says Brian, comparing Michael to Kiss’ Ace Frehley. “He doesn’t tend to overthink them. A lot of times he leaves room for improvisation in a song. I don’t really tend to do that. My parts tend to be more methodical and take me a lot of time to write. I usually write songs on piano so the guitar parts tend to be more in support of the vocal or the rest of the arrangement.”
Lemon Twigs songs have layers of piano and vocal harmonies, and making guitar tones work in such dense arrangements is an art in itself. The D’addarios produced latest album Songs For The General Public themselves, and they are meticulous about creating the sounds they want to hear.
“We just work for hours. Especially, Michael works for hours to get these sounds right.” The process is resolutely old-school: “Record to tape, and get all your compression and effects on the sound before you commit it to tape.
“With this record, we moved to recording on tape and then bouncing it on Pro Tools. I looked at the whole sonic picture and tried to fact pick out certain frequencies, especially with guitars, that you don’t feel are being represented in the full image, and try to bring those out. Before this record, I wasn’t Eq-ing while listening to all of the instruments together. I was really isolating each instrument and making it sound as good as it possibly could on its own, and then using levels to do the rest. Somewhere along the line I realised you’re gonna be hearing these instruments all together. It’s really about context.”
For guitars to fit into busy orchestrations, the tones often need to be relatively thin, and the band mainly used single-coil pickups. They borrow each other’s gear freely, but Brian’s main weapon is a black ’77 Stratocaster, while Michael favours a 70s Telecaster. When humbuckers are needed, Brian relies on a BC Rich Mockingbird. Their dad, a successful session guitarist, owns a ’68 Gibson SG which appears on Hog. The most surprising guitar belonged to their producer/collaborator Jonathan Rado: “For most of Michael’s songs, he used Rado’s Frankenstein guitar. The body is made from a 19th century table, but the neck is a Gibson.”
As you’d expect, the amps are all valve powered: “We either use a Vox AC30 Top Boost or a Fender SuperSonic. I like the Super-sonic because it’s got a large cab and it’s low to the ground, so it makes the whole house shake. For a lot of Michael’s more distorted sounds on the record, in LA, he had an AC30 hooked up to a Marshall cab. I think he ended up blowing the cab, but that was a great, great sound.” The distorted sounds are the AC30 fully cranked or the Super-sonic’s dirty channel. “We typically set the gain pretty low. I tend to set the first gain channel on the Super-sonic lower than the second. The second has a rounder, more bassy kind of sound that I tend to lean on when I’m using the Strat.”
Brian’s pedalboard setup is minimal. “I usually use an MXR Distortion II and an MXR Phase 100. Those are the two pedals that I used live. I use the Distortion II a lot live for more sustain. On the album, I just use different settings on the Super-sonic. I try not to do crazy EQ on the amp. Maybe I boost the mid a little bit, but I like the natural sound of the guitar itself. I try to do as much as I can with the tone controls on the guitar, or just turning the whole guitar volume down if it’s too bright.”
The most spectacular guitar moment on the album comes on the outro to closing track Ashamed, the only song written on guitar. “I don’t know how many amps we had going on that for the last part. I was playing a fretless Fender bass. Michael was playing guitar and he was using the Vox/marshall combo plus a Fender Princeton, and some other amps. There were mics everywhere. That was a really fun one to do. He was soloing, just playing to my bass playing so there was a lot of interaction between us that we built the song around. Then I put a lot of ebow harmonies on there.”
Songs For The General Public is full of unusual chord voicings, the result of Brian adapting songs written on piano for guitar. “You have to always do weird shapes to get the proper bass note.
I used a capo on The One because I wanted it to have this open sound.
“YOU HAVE TO FIND A CHORD SEQUENCE THAT SURPRISES YOU AND DOES SOMETHING TO YOU.”
I had to do all these open folky 9th chords. It is kind of a weird process translating it.” Writing unconventional chord progressions is challenging, and Brian explains how he approaches it: “I’m just led by my ear and by things that feel like new territory. I’ve probably done tons of modulations in similar places on this record, but on the next record there’ll probably be a different strategy. You’re just excited by certain things when you’re writing. I noticed there are a couple of songs that do a similar melodic thing on this record, and that won’t excite me next time around.”
He pauses to offer some advice on writing in his style: “You have to find a chord sequence that surprises you and does something to you. A lot of it to me is just being very aware of my feelings about what I’m playing, and not being really mental about it. It’s not all about trying to reinvent the wheel, but starting with something familiar and then trying to augment it later can be helpful. I find it so much easier to do on piano because you can just change the left hand – using different bass notes is a huge tool. It’s harder on guitar but just familiarising yourself with using a 3rd or 5th in the bass and experimenting with that helps. It also teaches you a lot about soloing because you have to hear the chords a different way.”
He emphasises the importance of being able to play by ear. He took classical lessons at school, and his dad taught him the basics of rock ’n’ roll. Since then, Brian has largely taught himself by learning his favourite records by ear, starting out with the entirety of The Who’s Live At Leeds.
“I learned songs by myself just listening to the parts over and over again. It’s essential to mastering the guitar, but I find it essential to the songwriting process, too, because you figure out what brought them to write those things. Spending a lot of time on one thing and learning it really well I think does a lot more than half-learning a bunch of things.”
What is striking talking to D’addario is the contrast between the band’s outrageous persona and the seriousness with which they approach their craft. The video for The One features Brian in makeup playing a Flying V on the roof of a van. For all that absurdity, it’s obvious Brian has a great deal of respect for his art. “Songs For The General Public is a pop record. Anything that is pop is fun. But when you examine it closer, there’s a lot of real emotion in there. I like being able to cry watching
The Muppets, or something not deadly serious. Often things that are supposed to be serious are boring...”