Following the release of Everything Harmony, which was praised by Questlove, Iggy Pop, Anthony Fantano, The Guardian and countless others, The Lemon Twigs - the New York rock band led by brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario - have once again caught the attention of the music listening public. A Dream Is All We Know, released less than a year after their last album, is a cheerful affair. As the title suggests, it is less a sober look at the darker side of life than a hopeful excursion into the realm of dreams.
Michael's line in the lead single and album opener "My Golden Years" - "In time I hope that I can show all the world the love in my mind" - serves as a statement of intent for the entire collection of songs, as the brothers race against time to create as much quality pop material as possible. On track two, The Lemon Twigs invite the listener into a bubblegum paradise of euphoric harmonies and biting clavinet ("They Don't Know How To Fall In Place"), followed by an existential space-age epic ("A Dream Is All I Know") and, elsewhere on the album, a baroque pocket-prog number ("Sweet Vibration"), a two-part nightmare comedy that doesn't let up ("Peppermint Roses"), and more.
Armed with the songwriting prowess of a lost era (somewhere between The Brill Building and 10452 Bellagio Road), the new record was carefully arranged and produced entirely analog in the brothers' Brooklyn recording studio. For most of the tracks, the two brothers swapped instruments and layered all the parts themselves. One exception to this rule was "In The Eyes Of The Girl", which was co-produced by Sean Ono Lennon in his studio in upstate New York.
While the album is chock full of progressive pop ideas, it appropriately closes with an ode to early rock 'n' roll on "Rock On (Over and Over)," contextualizing the band as part of a lineage of rock 'n' roll that never really stopped. It's taken The Lemon Twigs nearly a decade to receive the major accolades they've earned over the past year from critics and audiences alike. While their first records were appreciated for their musicianship, the brothers have conveyed their ideas with more clarity and emotional resonance on recent records. In other words, "it took too long to say 'rock on'".