As time keeps passing by, I continue to grow older and it seems to me that age brings comfort (or apathy depending on how you look at it). I have spent the majority of my life up to this point voraciously consuming as much new music as I could; my lists of favorite artists on various online profiles has continually grown longer and longer and now I often feel like a parody of a music enthusiast. There is so much great music out there both in the past and in the present (and surely there will be in the future) that it is not possible to experience all of it. Incredibly, this is exactly what the internet suggests that we do. Despite all this, I have reached a point where I am reluctant to listen to new artists. I have a large collection of music which I love and adding new faces at this point feels kind of pointless. I had always heard it was hard to make new friends as an adult but I never expected this. Now don’t get me wrong, if a trusted friend recommends something, I will still check it out but these new bands admittedly are facing an uphill battle to make it into my music collection. Suffice it to say, it is this very problem which has made Folkways Magazine so challenging.
I went into this review, my first article on this site since last year, completely blind. I have never heard of the band Twin Sister. A brief internet search as well as a conversation with Evan Sherman has taught me that In Heaven is their debut LP and that one of the guys from Grizzly Bear is allegedly involved with it in some capacity (edit: it turns out that this was actually Twin Shadow and not Twin Sister). After I finally started to listen, I was surprised to hear an opening track that seems to come from the same ‘Space Lounge’ world of Stereolab. Further tracks explore disco, dream pop and other largely electronic –based genres and sub-genres; the unifying factor is the voice of lead singer Andrea Estella who seems to appear on nearly every track with the possible exception of the closer, “Eastern Green”.
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