Long Island dream-pop darlings Twin Sister are winning fans with their debut album, and guitarist Eric Cardona tells SIOBHÁN KANEhow lucky they feel
TWIN SISTER shimmered their way from Long Island into many hearts around 2008 with their EP Vampires with Dreaming Kids. Since then, their inventive mixture of indie and dream pop and Andrea Estella's lovely vocal has culminated in another EP ( Colour Your Life) and this year's majestic debut album In Heaven, which reveals a depth that far outweighs their years, creating an atmosphere that sits somewhere between Cocteau Twins and Deerhoof, New Order and Portishead.
You recorded Vampires With Dreaming Kids in 2008, and the subsequent response has been overwhelming
We have all been amazed. Vampires with Dreaming Kidswasn't heard by many people immediately, mostly just our friends. It wasn't until the end of 2009 that we got some exposure. It was quite unexpected, and seeing everything snowball from then has been quite shocking. We're eternally grateful that we have the opportunity to make music on such a large scale. We would make music for ourselves and our friends regardless, but to be able to have an audience is a gift we don't take lightly.
You have many demos on your website. The Hood Internet’s remix is great, mixing up Lady Daydreamand Raekwon
I love that one! We like Wu-Tang Clan a lot, and hearing Raekwon and Method Man over one of our songs was a surreal experience. For the most part, remixes are a strange thing, I don’t really know what to think of them. Sometimes they just become a tool in selling a product rather than a creative endeavour. However, any time somebody can use our music as a starting point for their own artistic vision is a good thing.
The artwork for your records is beautiful. What is the story behind the artwork for In Heaven, by your friend Jonny Negron?
That is Andrea on the cover of In Heaven. We've known Jonny for a long time, and think his work is amazing, so we leapt at the chance to get him involved. The cover is actually a crop of a larger painting that Jonny made, someday we'll do something with the full painting. I really love the gatefold painting inside the record, it's like a hidden magical world.
A “hidden magical world” well describes your music, as well as the world of dreams and “adjagas”, the space between waking and sleeping
I’ve never heard adjagas before, that’s a beautiful word. I think our best ideas come in that space, and we’re constantly chasing that feeling. The world seems limitless, and it is upsetting to wake and face reality sometimes. I think art derives a lot of its power from its ability to transport you back into that world.
That world is so half-lit and strangely romantic, even though it evokes vivid feelings of absence and estrangement. Your work often sounds like a yearning for something, perhaps the past, or something in absentia
I think our generation is very bound up in the notion of nostalgia. With YouTube and MP3s, we have the ability to obsess over the recent past, and living through a small recession, it sometimes seems like we might have missed the best things. There’s this strange feeling of connecting to people and ideas that are long gone and yet being disconnected from the people all around us.
Your recent video for Kimmi in a Rice Fieldsees Andrea as the subject of her own ghost story
Bryan [Ujueta] directed the video with our friend Dan Devine, and it definitely draws from ghost stories and myth. He wanted to interpret the lyrics as he saw them, and find beauty within a small scope. The lyrics came from a short story that Andrea wrote, so the video is an idea that has been filtered through several layers.
The video is so striking, yet you have previously said you struggle with the “entertaining” aspect of a live show, perhaps because you are quite shy?
We are shy. I enjoy solitude and the quiet, especially when it comes to being creative. Songs need to be coaxed out of hiding, and sometimes that’s at odds with putting on a live show. We’ve gotten better at it, but I think we need to work hard at making the music spectacular, because we’re never going to be jumping off our amplifiers.
Twin Sister play Dublin’s Grand Social on November 12
