Twin Sister >> Can't see the other side of your dream

After doing approx. infinity posts last month, and with the otter-rich coast of California fresh in our minds, I'm giving myself a planned semi-sabbatical this month.  So here's the first of a few well-placed monster smash hits to close out the year.

Twin Sister - "The Other Side Of Your Face"

(Infinite Best Recordings, 2010)

This band formed in Long Island and soon moved to hipster mecca Brooklyn.  My first thought when I heard them was "Cat Power for chillwavers."  I think this song is up there with Film School's "TIme To Listen as one of the best songs of 2010.  SInger Andrea Estella coos her way through some obliquely undulating guitarscapes, while a metronomic drumbeat pounds away surgically.  It's long, but it could go on for another hour and I would still be transfixed, so hopefully some intrepid remixer will take me up on that.

When Rhino puts out a chillwave box set in 20 years, this song ought to be on it.  Twin Sister played this song when I saw them open for Memoryhouse at One Eyed Jacks in Aug. 2010.  I filmed them doing an amazing performance of this song, but my sister can't find the clip on her camera, nor can she find the clip of Memoryhouse doing "Lately."  For now, check out the music video for another song they played that night, the shoulda-been-hit "All Around And Away We Go":

AE is a brunette in that video, though she was blonde at the concert, a few months before this video was released.  (I read her say in some interview that she's Hispanic.)  Not sure who the blonde in the video is, but she bears a lot of resemblance to AE.  I never knew AE had such dance moves inside her, since she pretty much just stood still during the concert.  My point is that a band has to be pretty versatile to make a catchy pop song like "All Around" and a meandering song like "Other Side," and both were released on the same EP, which my sister bought at the gig.  Memoryhouse were better overall, but "Other Side" was probably the highlight of the evening for me.   A local synth-goth band called Kindest Lines played first; they recently opened a leg of Xiu Xiu's tour.

I like how Infinite Best Recordings is a pun on the inscrutable book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.  So inscrutable, in fact, that I have it but haven't even started reading it.  They returned this June opening for Beirut, but you couldn't pay me enough to go see that damn band.  In 2011, Twin Sister have become such Pitchfork favorites that I have to assume that money has exchanged hands between the two parties.  I can all but prove that that has happened in recent years with Pitchfork and the following acts, all of whom get a breaking news bulletin on P4k if they so much as lose a sock: Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, Wilco, M.I.A., Wavves, Drake, White Stripes, Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips, Kanye West, Bon Iver, and of course Radiohead / Thom Yorke.  Note that three of those are on Merge Records, a (one-great) label that advertises heavily on Pitchfork.

I went to Blue Cypress Books on Oak St. today for the first time, after seeing a photo of it a week or two ago in the newspaper.  I asked if they had anything by John Biguenet, and the girl mentioned that he is her English teacher at Loyola, so I mentioned that his daughter Nicole was in my grade in high school.  I was pretty impressed by their selection.  I then shot some hoops at this covered basketball court on River Rd. at the foot of Broadway, instead of riding my bike in Audubon Park.  Tonight is Saints vs. Lions, and I almost scored a ticket from my dad's friend Jay.

Planets with similar climates: Curve - "Cherry" (1991), My Bloody Valentine - "Soon" (1990), Sonic Youth - "The Diamond Sea" (1995), Long Fin Killie - "Valentino" (1996), Cocteau Twins - "Road, River And Rail" (1990).


Bought at Blue Cypress Books today: Daniel Scott - Pay This Amount; Wallace Stegner - Collected Stories; Charles Baxter - Through The Safety Net; Alain Robbe-Grillet - Topology Of A Phantom City; Ellen Lesser - The Shoplifter's Apprentice; a "Reading is sexy" bumper sticker. (All the books are short story collections except for Topology.)