Five years ago in Japan, The Lemon Twigs stalked the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Both bands were playing the 2019 Summer Sonics festival in Chiba and Osaka. In the hotel housing artists, crew and suchlike, the geeky, 60s-loving brother duo from Hicksville, Long Island (barely out of their teens, showbiz in their veins, precocious masters of pop rock melodies) tentatively staked out the Chilis’ floor.
It turned out their nerves were unfounded. Like many other big-shots before them – and even more since, from Todd Rundgren to Iggy Pop to Jimmy Fallon – the Red Hot Chili Peppers were Lemon Twigs fans. Anthony Kiedis admired their musical chops. Chad Smith had seen them open for Arctic Monkeys at the Hollywood Bowl the previous year. It was a happy meeting.
“We kept walking purposefully through,” ebullient youngest Michael D’Addario recounts, “because they had the whole second floor and all the other artists were on the third floor. So instead of taking the elevator, we kept walking up the stairs to try to catch them on the second floor, and then they were like…”
He catches himself, suddenly self-aware. “This is a bit of a self-serving story, because they were like: ‘Lemon Twigs!’ I was totally star-struck, because we were, you know, tweens.”
You wouldn’t necessarily expect such fanboying from a pair who grew up working on Broadway, rubbing shoulders with A-list stars. Not to mention a band so prodigiously assured in their own retro style – so audibly informed by the dulcet 60/70s likes of The Beach Boys, Beatles, Monkees, Turtles and Lovin’ Spoonful. A band who released their debut album when they were aged 15 and 17.
“The bad part of that story, though, was that we were playing at the same time as them, so nobody showed up for our set,” older, calmer brother Brian D’Addario adds. “I remember seeing somebody in a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt looking kind of forlorn in the front row.”
The D’Addarios are friendly in a slightly chaotic way. They talk over each other a lot. They’ll mock one another one minute and offer sincere praise the next. It’s easy to picture them painstakingly recording lush works to tape (which they did for their sun-kissed latest album A Dream Is All We Know) while the studio falls into disarray around them.
“In a way we’re disciplined,” Micheal says. “It gets really dirty and messy in the studio, and it’s difficult to work. The disciplined thing would be to clean it up, and then you could clear your mind a little bit... But then especially on the last two records, we didn’t let anything fly [on record] that wasn’t perfect.”
Now aged 25 and 27, the Lemon Twigs have the singular, trend-averse focus of a much older group. After the initial buzz of their 2016 debut Do Hollywood, follow-up Go To School was an idiosyncratic conceptual affair about a chimpanzee that goes to high school and ultimately sets the building on fire. When that record and 2020’s Songs For The General Public under-performed, they left their label.
Newly independent, they turned heads again with last year’s Everything Harmony, an exquisite 70s soft-pop record with a brooding heart.
“We didn’t really know what our audience was at that point,” Brian explains of that (covid-induced) gig-free time. “I really like my ballads, and Michael was like: ‘Well, they’re your best songs, so let’s build an album around those.’”
On tour, though, it was the more upbeat moments that were fun to play. It’s those sounds that have now shaped A Dream Is All We Know. Not since Jellyfish has a post-70s band so devotedly pursued pop-rock perfection. My Golden Years marries gauzy West Coast harmonies with heartrending key shifts. Peppermint Roses is all Lennon/McCartney via Monkee Micky Dolenz. One track, In The Eyes Of The Girl, was co-produced by Sean Lennon in upstate New York. Otherwise it was all crafted in their new Brooklyn studio.
It’s a world they’ve been immersed in since they could talk. Even more so as the theatre and film work of their childhood started to dry up. Unsurprisingly, school quickly fell to the bottom of their priorities.
“I don’t think we felt like ‘odd ones out’ necessarily, but we were very unfocused in terms of schoolwork,” Michael says. “I mean, it started off pretty good, and then it fell off because we just didn’t care about it any more.”
“And the acting was more like an extracurricular activity,” Brian adds.
“Yeah,” Michael says, “music was always the fun thing.”
The D’Addarios’ ambitions grew serious quickly. Their mother, a talented singer, encouraged them to sing together from a young age. Their father, musiciansongwriter Ronnie D’Addario, put instruments within their reach and played old Ed Sullivan Show sets by The Beatles. He also recorded their early musical efforts. Go to ‘My First Songs’ on Brian’s Bandcamp page and you can hear them for yourself.
“He’s like, seven, and he’s playing all the instruments,” Michael enthuses. “Remarkable for that age.”
“Our dad would see us getting frustrated at not being able to play,” Brian adds, “because we were so obsessed with The Beatles and stuff, and he would show us what we could play at that age. As we got older it was a lot of gradual, casual lessons. It was never forced upon us at all.”
By their pre-teens they were making a living on stage. Brian had lead roles in musicals such as Les Miserables and The Little Mermaid, while Michael acted in the Arthur Miller classic All My Sons. Six days a week their mother drove them to Broadway from Long Island for rehearsals and shows.
“I think they liked that I was a non-actor,” Michael muses of his acting days. “I met Tom Cruise, I have a photo with Al Pacino and stuff from when I was a kid. We met way more famous people when we were kids. I was just kind of… [grins] a cool kid.”
Meanwhile, in contrast with his current character, Brian was an excitable, hyperactive child. At one point he almost got fired from Les Mis. “I guess I was probably excited to be there. The lead was doing their big song, and it was during rehearsals and I, like, went behind [him] and then I was kind of mocking him,” he says sheepishly, grinning.
The introspection that came with his teens is what you hear in much of the Lemon Twigs’ music. Like the Beach Boys’ finest hours, there’s a touch of darkness in even their lightest moments. Sharp undertones and left turns. Sunny pop songs that evoke the bittersweetness of living. The sort of music you make only if you’re truly in love with it, as the Lemon Twigs are.
“I think that if even we hadn’t been this kind of musician, we probably would have been in cover bands or something,” Michael muses. “Brian probably would have done his classical guitar, which he’s very good at. He would have done lessons and performances like that. I would have been in a cover band or something like that, like a sixties cover band.”
A Dream Is All We Know is out now via Captured Tracks. The Lemon Twigs’ European tour begins on August 31, with US dates in October.
