The Lemon Twigs, interview: 'We’d rather do something that makes you think a little'

(Olivia Bee)

“What can I say? It is a ridiculous album,” says Michael D’Addario, leaning back on his chair, the flared bottoms of his unfeasibly high-waisted corduroy trousers stretched out atop a Soho Radio studio table. Strap yourselves in: The Lemon Twigs have made a rock musical. It can hardly come as a shock. From child actors on the boards of Broadway to a hyperactive world of sumptuously harmonic glam power-pop – via the Bay City Rollers’ wardrobe and Rod Stewart’s old hairdresser – the Long Island brothers have been flamboyantly theatrical outliers since emerging in 2016 as if teleported straight from 1974.

But is the world ready for second album Go to School, a fantastical, Tommy-meets-Rodgers and Hammerstein opus about Shane the adopted chimpanzee who, unloved, bullied and heartbroken burns down his school, killing 100 people, before running away to the woods to live a life of reflective solitude?

“Yeah!” says Michael, at 19 the youngest D’Addario brother. “Why not? They’re ready for everything else. Maybe it’s time for a good musical. People love Hamilton. This is nothing like Hamilton, which is a good thing. There are always new musicals, but this one has a lot of elements missing in modern musicals”. Such as? “Thoughtful, interesting songs. They try to make the new musicals pop music. All the new musicals you see are really flashy.”

“Some people will hate it,” admits Brian, 21. “But lots of people will dig it. People will relate to it. It’s about perspectives that people have.”

Michael D’Addario of The Lemon Twigs

The sons of musician Ronnie D’Addario, the pair have been immersed in showbiz since they were toddlers. Look at YouTube and you’ll find endearing clips of them as children playing everything from “Pinball Wizard” to their own hip-hop tunes dressed in backwards caps and huge neck chains. They both sang on Broadway, while Michael acted in films alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Ethan Hawke. It gives the impression success was pre-ordained, though Brian is keen to stress this wasn’t the leg up some imagine. “Sometimes it’s written that ‘dad was successful songwriter’, but we didn’t get any connections through him. Most of this was luck.”

Nonetheless, it took just over a year from The Lemon Twigs’ first show to signing with 4AD amid no little hysteria. In the event, the remarkable music on debut Do Hollywood converted many of the cynics. They found fans in Elton John, Paul Weller and Alex Turner, who went to two of the duo’s early London shows. In September, The Lemon Twigs will support Arctic Monkeys on their arena tour.

Today in Central London the pair insist on being interviewed separately. This isn’t, I’m assured, because of some Gallagher-like rumbling feud but rather because past interviews would often descend into distracted in-jokes and constant interruptions. “It’s much better,” Michael says. But what if you contradict each other? “Better to contradict than to be cut off.”

The stark contrast in their personalities explains why this was probably a wise move. Brian is measured and serious. Michael is unpredictable: sullen one moment, excitable the next. He gives the sense his answers are often off the cuff. Has success changed their relationship? “I don’t think it’s really fundamentally changed,” says Brian. “We still live at home with our parents. Once we get home we get out of whatever mindset we were in on the road.” Michael doesn’t dispute him. “It’s the same insecurities, same arguments and same things we love about each other. It’s just really interesting to go from fighting about our toy Beatles guitars to fighting over this.”

The artwork for new album Go To School

Musically, however, the pair are simpatico. Whereas on Do Hollywood they would write alone, for Go to School they collaborated on each other’s songs (“We have less of an ego about it now...”). They discussed in minute detail how the album would sound from the moment Michael, studying day and night in order to graduate before The Lemon Twigs’ first world tour, decided to write songs based in school.

There are elements of the brothers’ own school experiences in Shane’s simian struggles: Brian says he “had what I would consider a comfortable isolation”, while Michael says he used his relative fame as a protective shield. “Any bully was more distracted by the fact I was in that one movie. ‘What, you were in a movie? How much you get paid for that?’”

Written, performed, arranged and produced by the pair and featuring their musical polymath hero Todd Rundgren and the D’Addario’s own mother Susan Hall as Shane’s adoptive human parents Bill and Carol, Go To School is ambitious, histrionic and, yes, somewhat ludicrous, overflowing with melodic richness and memorable tunes that take in Who-like rock, progressive AOR, music hall and show tune balladry. There certainly won’t be another album like it in 2018.

The glitzy music masks the album’s dark themes. Throughout Shane’s journey from wide-eyed optimist to lovelorn firestarter, we get thwarted ambition, broken families, victimisation, unrequited love, desertion and the effect of life’s daily grind on the psyche. On “Rock Dreams”, Carol blames adopting Shane for her music career stalling. It’s a close to the knuckle true tale: Susan Hall gave up her own artistic aspirations to become a psychologist. “It’s the worst versions of our parents possible,” Michael says. “If she was that close to that character she couldn’t have sung it, it would have been too hurtful”.

(Olivia Bee)

In Shane’s defiant act of arson during the Bowie-meets-country rock mini-epic “The Fire”, there are even parallels to the gun violence that blights America. Unintentional, they both say. “We realised after that would be an interpretation,” Brian says. “It’s so sad that it didn’t even cross our minds, it’s so ingrained in the culture you wouldn’t even think twice that it was a scenario that could happen, even in a fantasy musical.”

But if Shane doesn’t get his comeuppance, fleeing to the woods never to be seen again, what is the moral of the story? “He finds out ultimately that love even unrequited still has value,” Brian says. “If you can prevent rejection turning into hatred and still love despite wrongs that other people do you’ll ultimately still be able to feel love and happiness.” So it’s a positive tale? “It’s not positive or negative; it’s sort of open to interpretation. But the moral exists regardless.”

I do wonder if The Lemon Twigs appreciate just how exceptionally out of step this all is?

“Maybe people don’t do that much out of step,” says Brian. “Most of it is identity-less, like background music or something. It just doesn’t interest us. We’d rather do something that makes you think a little, that sounds like our favourite sounds.”

Go to School is out on 4AD. The Lemon Twigs tour supporting Arctic Monkeys from 6 September