For Mother’s Day weekend, I enlisted the help of my parents and sister to give The Junkie Twins’ Push to Exit a family filled review. Fitting too, because The Junkie Twins is a band of Australian brothers, Anthony and David Gill, now residing in Brooklyn.
With the help of my family, I could comment on how different people may hear different influences. Now, I really do not like comparing bands with other bands, but great art stems from imitation. Besides, The Junkie Twins are clearly junkies of other great genres of music.
Junkie Twins Push to Enter
With Push to Exit, The Junkie Twins lay down a very at-home feel, sounding like many brother bands coming before them. The Junkie Twins have strong influences of Oasis and their sound also includes hints of Hanson, as well as reminding me of The Pigott Brothers.
“Petty Thief” issues a current of ’90s elements and contains components of a musical, my sister gave Rent as an example. With dance rhythms and electronic disco rock beats, my Dad drummed his hands against the steering wheel and the chorus “steal[s] our hearts.”
Combing punk, emo, pop, and rock in a meld, “Long Walk Home” has the definite mark of Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” It also experiments with presenting orchestral instruments, making for a truly blissful sound.
With darker bass sounds and muffled underwater production, “Freda (Love Will Be the Death of Me)” introduces psychedelic rock to British rock. As a foil to this song, “Puzzle” has a beautiful, soothing melodic structure. With the violin singing in the background again, “Puzzle” sounds like a “broken heart,” according to my Mom.
The mysteriousness of spacing and timing from the drums and the revolving beat against the legato nature of the vocals creates a deep complexity of dimension in “Fool Like Me.” A vibrating, warping noise buzzes from the guitar in a synthesized sound and the line “let yourself down easy” drops down the octave in a sliding fashion.
At the close, “Fool Like Me” breaks into pure clarity with the orchestra sounds bringing brighter notes and a swooping melody, reverberating off of the beautifully poetic lyrics: “stuck like a flower wilting in the sun / so go and let your wild heart run.”
“Untitled Love Song” is playful, one of the more upbeat-feeling songs of the album, with a fun stagey quality from the keyboard. The lyrics are like a journal entry; true, real, raw, reminiscent of Third Eye Blind or Toad Wet Sprocket, per my sister, and to me, like Butch Walker. “Untitled Love Song” is happiness on antidepressants: “we need lives when we’re down.”
“Light of This Moment” also has a bright energy and beat, juxtaposing against the downbeat of the more mellow melancholy songs. The music is a strong pulse “falling into the light of this moment,” making this song a moment of light in Push to Exit.
“Blackout Summer” is a pretty, dreamy song with a wavy quality, a total summer sounding song that anyone could slow dance to on the beach. And the final song of the album, “Tyranny,” has an accordion wave, with a folk sound like the musical Once.
“Tyranny” with its punk, angst chords plays with a major progression of notes and ties the album into perfect synchronicity. One of the last lines of the song is “push to exit me,” a sound bite paralleling the cohesiveness of the album.
Push to Exit reminds me of listening to songs on my Walkman in my high school days; my album always had to match my mood in the morning. The Junkie Twins would have made for the perfect commute CD: With their wide spectrum of references, they create a brilliant rainbow of rock.
