The Lemon Twigs
Vicar Street, Dublin
★★★★☆
Scientists have yet to invent a fully operational time machine, but a Lemon Twigs gig is a close second best. With their long hair and velvet jackets, and the louche manner of dedicated Mick Jagger understudies, the Long Island brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario reel in the years for all they’re worth on Tuesday night, during a concert that narrows the gap between 2026 and 1966 to the point where it’s hard to spot the difference.
The D’Addarios, who are in their mid-20s, are songwriters born out of time. They look like The Rolling Stones, harmonise like The Beach Boys, rock like The Kinks and sing silly love songs like The Beatles. Were they an iota less talented it would surely come off as pastiche: kids larking about in their grandfathers’ bell bottoms.
But The Lemon Twigs aren’t copying the greats of rock so much as arguing that music peaked somewhere between The Beatles’ first album and Badfinger’s final one. It’s been all downhill ever since.
They make that point with Look for Your Mind!, the psychedelic standout from their recent sixth LP of the same name. That album is a return to form from the duo whose career had a wobble after they released a record about a chimpanzee who goes to high school.
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Such monkeying around gets short shrift at this vintage evening, where they pack more than 20 songs into a tight 75 minutes. It also sees Michael D’Addario, like a one-man synergy of George Harrison and Ringo Starr, move breezily between guitar and drums.
There are tunes that suggest Gen Z’s answer to Daydream Believer, by The Monkees (In My Head), and a lament about the wickedness of capitalism (Bring You Down), all topped off with banter about heading to a nearby pub for postshow beers.
It’s lapped up by an audience that runs from gentlemen of a certain age to kids who can barely remember the early 21st century, let alone the dawn of rock’n’roll. Such diversity is testament to the breadth of The Lemon Twigs’ music and to the brothers’ thesis that great rock never goes out of fashion; it just finds new ways to come back.
The encore opens with Brian D’Addario, the older sibling, returning alone to deliver the folky Joy. He does in a delicate, conversational style reminiscent of Paul McCartney warbling through Blackbird. As the rest of the band – the line-up also includes the bassist Danny Ayala and the drummer Reza Matin – troop back on they then zip through The Bobby Fuller Four’s Let Her Dance.
Still looking as if they’re just warming up, The Lemon Twigs finish with How Can I Love Her More?, a piece of Byrds-style jangling escapism that you can imagine the duo belting out on The Ed Sullivan Show. It’s one final piece of retro fun at the end of a performance that insists the past is not a foreign country but a gateway to the coolest soundtrack of all time.
