The Twin Atlas returns after seven-year hiatus
There’s a strummy tradition of pastoral rock from New Jersey that goes back to the Feelies’ The Good Earth and stretches forward to Real Estate. It’s a lineage that includes the Twin Atlas, the home-recording project of Sean Byrne and his friend Luke Zaleski, a pair of Jersey natives who met at the University of Delaware in the mid-’90s. Byrne drummed for several Philadelphia-area bands, notably Lenola and Mazarin, but after he and Zaleski started noodling around on guitars they called themselves the Twin Atlas, releasing the wonderfully titled The Philadelphia Parking Authority Must Die, their first collection of home-recordings, in 2000.
“The early Twin Atlas, which does feel really distant and different for me, does feel like short sketches, things that weren’t necessarily seen through; more like capturing ideas, really rough, really quick,” says Byrne. “As things went on towards the midpoint, around the time of [2005’s] Sun Township, I definitely was trying to evolve the songs more when I was recording them, give them a little more body, with more drums, and take them over to friends’ studios and make them a little more full. Instead of throwing everything and the kitchen sink onto the record and some of it being half-baked, these are more distilled. Quality over quantity, I hope.”
That’s true of the new Big Spring, the sixth Twin Atlas album (not including several collections of bonus tracks and demos) and the first in seven years. In the interim, Byrne devoted himself to raising a family and to releasing instrumental, more ambient tracks under the name Lazy Salon. But during the hiatus, he started stockpiling songs, too.
“The more I started to work on them, I knew they weren’t going to be Lazy Salon things. You know, ‘Looks like a duck, acts like a duck,’” says Byrne. “I talked to Luke, and he wasn’t able to join in on the music and writing of stuff, like we had before, but I prodded him to contribute some lyrics because that’s never anything I put much time into. I felt the switch back on for the project.”
The result is an understated gem, from the brief, reflective “Ride Upon” to the propulsive, Mazarin-like “Atlantic.” At 10 songs in less than 28 minutes, it’s indeed quality over quantity.
—Steve Klinge
