The brothers who song-write in a time machine are back with another album. 

★★★★☆

Brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario saunter straight out of the hit factory with their fifth studio album, A Dream Is All We Know. Swingingly vintage, The Lemon Twigs continue to honour the musical sentiments of the 1960s, through Beach Boy consonance and Beatle-esque arrangements. Their previous album, Everything Harmony, was released less than a year ago and showcases a myriad of unwinding ballads, entirely rooted in the soils of melancholy and yearning. A Dream Is All We Know flips the emotional coin, with twelve sanguine and hopeful tracks which enter new realms and visit places only dreams can take us. 

The NYC-based siblings claim the album rides the musical wave of the emerging ‘Mersey-beach’ movement, where the sensibilities of surfers and teddy boys are pooled together in lyrical grandeur. It’s refreshing to hear such robust examples of timeless song-writing – who would have thought pastiche and imitation could generate such ardent originality? 

The album’s lead single and opening track, My Golden Years, encapsulates all that’s good about music. It’s jangle pop at its finest, with lusciously bright 12-string glimmers which are urgently reinforced by a drum-forged glossy vitality. 

“Cause in the blink of an eye / I’ll watch these golden years fly by.”

— My Golden Years, A Dream Is All We Know (2024)

Potently reminiscent, the song is a 3-minute testament to the transient nature of life. The brothers founded The Lemon Twigs as high school students in 2014 and, exactly ten years later, they are just as talented, but now perform with a gratifying air of maturity. Nostalgia is profoundly ingrained in their melodic grooves and the album fortifies this time and time again. They Don’t Know How To Fall In Place pops and bangs with bubblegum pomp, it’s dominated by serrated clavinet hooks and Ringo-style tambourine playing. Church Bells highlights their multi-instrumentalism; for trumpets, cellos, and a mandolin (all played by Brian) are introduced over ridiculously rich harmonies. Raised in a musical household, the D’Addario brothers alternate who takes lead vocal, whilst both playing guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, and an opulent selection of other instruments. 

The titular A Dream Is All I Know soars with a celestial philosophy, it’s a cosmic saga which is followed by the equally catchy and concise, Baroque-pop ditty Sweet Vibration. Brooding with youthful whimsy and infiltrated by ruminations on destiny and nature, it’s twangy, twee, and pleasantly old-fashioned. All of the songs were arranged and produced in their Brooklyn recording studio, except for the Brian Wilson-influenced In The Eyes Of The Girl. Co-produced by Sean Ono Lennon in his studio, this love ballad is wholly dreamy, and it swells and swings with a romantic tranquillity. 

Side two commences with the mystic close harmonies of If You And I Are Not Wise. The song jingles with a Big Star delicacy and gains altitude with a scalic warmth. It’s shadowed by my favourite track, How Can I Love Her More, in a culmination of power pop bliss. With intricate bass parts and a ghostly theremin line, it sounds like the baby of Pet Sounds and Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? 

Followed by the mellow Ember Days, which is a Nick Drake-style acoustic bossa nova, is the comical and stentorian Peppermint Roses. With unexpected chord changes and weird eccentricity, it’s like Spinal Tap at a Broadway musical. The penultimate track, I Should’ve Known Right From The Start, is fragmented by instrumental drum hooks and twinkly percussion. It’s a satisfying exhale of self-critical gleam, with nasal harmonies and silvery bass lines. The album closes with an anticipatory inhale. The Raspberries-style early rock ‘n’ roll homage, Rock On (Over and Over), seals the deal with showy vocal distortion and playful rhythms.

“It took too long to say ‘rock on’”

— Rock On (Over and Over), A Dream Is All We Know (2024) 

Short and most definitely sweet, A Dream Is All We Know is an album which gets better with each listen. For fans of golden era rock, be thankful that there’s a modern equivalent and one that operates at such a high calibre.

A Dream Is All We Know is out now via Captured Tracks.  

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