Space Twins
The End of Imagining
Raga Drop
Space Twins are indeed the black sheep of the Weezer extended family. With the now marginalized Weezer churning out gigabytes of inferior songs instead of focusing on making a handful of songs brilliant, and while Pat Wilson’s riff-whoring Special Goodness slicks back its hair for an expected MTV invitation, Brian Bell’s Space Twins is stoned. Very, very stoned and listening to a continual loop of Blur, The Beatles and T. Rex.
I can’t imagine how Bell got so heavily into Britpop, but it fits with his full-time band’s emphasis on tunefulness. Most of the songs on here loll back and forth on gently strummed acoustic guitars, a driving beat and a piano backbone a la Blur’s Parklife. “Rings of Saturn” has almost the same chord changes and structure as Blur’s “End of a Century.” Even the more “rock” sounding songs like “Yellow Camaro” have a distinctive British pogoing feel.
It’s a very good imitation for the most part, but at times Bell tries a little too hard to capture his influences’ idiosyncrasies. “Trudy Truelove,” while very catchy and fun, is a little too blatant a nod to Lennon/McCartney’s alliterated characters. Less enjoyable is “Nico,” a groan inducing attempt to revisit “Yellow Submarine” complete with psychedelic storybook lyrics and a sea theme.
These missteps reveal a more inherent flaw: while these songs are pleasant enough, we’ve heard most of them done better before. Still I have to say this is the best Weezer-related release in the last six years or so. That may not be saying much, but it’s something.
Space Twins: http://www.spacetwins.com/
