“Lady Daydream” by Mr Twin Sister. “Just because I’m losing, doesn’t make me a loser”
When life hits us with the good, it happens a couple times over. That’s why people often say, “good things come in pairs”. Yet we all know there’s the flip side…..that when life hits us bad, it usually comes in a series of unfortunate events or circumstances. It’s one of those undeniable lessons in life that we learn for better or worse.
One thing I love about music is it’s uncanny knack for emulating this duality of life – and throughout my life, music has played an unequivocal role of dire importance. It always seems I go through those cycles in life and in music, where it’s feast or famine, drought or deluge, a string of happy events and then a run of bitter disappointment. This is life, and most of the time we have no choice but to accept its terms.
It’s a strange yet seductive quality of music, which occurs more often for those who continuously pursue new experiences in music the same way they constantly thirst for new moments in life. Ultimately I believe exploring and collecting new music is a constant quest meant for those who are never satisfied. So sometimes I struggle in life, and in music, and then like that natural ebb and flow of time, something changes. When I stumble upon some truly inspiring new music, it seems to come in a wave, with series and series of great discoveries. It’s like double bingo.
This most recent string of good things happened specifically in the discovery of some fantastic new shoegaze. For the first discovery, I owe all the credit to a friend who sent an email about a guy named Greg Gonzalez, who fronts a band named Cigarettes After Sex . The track he sent was “K.”, and as I told him, it took a little under fifteen seconds for me to be totally won over by the essence of the song. It’s dreamy, stoic, plain, and epic all at the same time. The space between music and words has that lonely errant quality of wandering down a desolate highway at night, and yet the romanticism comes in the slightest inflection in his vocals and a bit of lilt in the guitars. Then there’s the odd contrast in the lyrics, which for all that subtle emotion, comes off as cool and dispassionate when taken literally.
The intrigue is clearly the layers, buried under very simple and sparse sounds. I wasn’t surprised to find out that Greg Gonzalez started this project as a student living in El Paso, because it comes off as perfect music for that isolated and expansive geography of West Texas. Mazzy Star and Cowboy Junkies are clearly influences, and are also the types of musicians that make music nearly perfect for playing in the sort of environs that make up late nights in West Texas. It’s hauntingly ambient music that some call shoegaze, though most would probably agree has that loner’s quality that for some indescribable reason can belong to an aesthetic that is very different, and quite possibly more country than country music – at least within the wide open spaces that make up a road in a lonely desert.
One of my favorite songs ever recorded comes from one of the two aforementioned bands- Mazzy Star. You know a song possesses an undeniably unique style and personality when it’s entire mood and aesthetic envelops you and changes the way you behave for those short yet sweet minutes and seconds. Well, this song does that, and often haunts me for many hours afterwards. I would say driving an interstate late at night with only the small comfort of a thought and a song can be the most enchanting thing I have known, and for me this song captures that sentiment perfectly:
“Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star
The second discovery I had, right after finding Cigarettes After Sex and the song “K.”, is the song “Lady Daydream” by Mr Twin Sister. The song can be played at the top of the post.
I had already known about this group from Long Island and their singular sound that is both dream pop, synth pop, and a beautiful collection of other haunting ambience. The discovery of this one perfect song completed that great pair of discoveries. This song has more magical bedroom fantasy underlying the sound, yet when paired with the song “K.” feels quite appropriately connected. When mentioning the band Mr Twin Sister I feel you must mention their amazing self-titled album from 2014. There’s a pervasive mood to the album that was so alien, yet beautiful, that I ended up listening to this album, and especially the songs “Sensitive” and “Crime Scene”, over and over again. Fittingly, these songs bookend one another, being the first and last tracks on this gorgeous album that is a perfect distillation of the dream, synth, ambient, and shoegaze elements of pop music. Although the fragile, nearly porcelain delicacy of the sound makes this less pop and a bit more on the eccentric side, I think the band makes great proof of the idea of unique musical stylings that force one to change their mood by the mere force of its total atmosphere.
