Casting a Shadow
There are many fantastical stories about artists growing up in small towns in unconventional circumstances and then fulfilling their dreams by moving to the big city. George Lewis Jr., who records as Twin Shadow, took the path to New York five years ago after being born in the Dominican Republic and spending his childhood in a small town named Venice on the west coast of Florida. his journey later included encounters with a circus, the Baptist church, stints in Berlin and Copenhagen and the pursuit of a woman.
We came there because we had been living in Miami and our house had been robbed twice and my mother had been mugged, says Lewis, recalling Venice while stretched out on the sand of Brighton Beach. We all witnessed my mother getting mugged outside of a gas station. I think my parents were then looking for the most boring and possibly safe place to raise kids.
It was kind of a strange and lonely existence, he recalls. But it was a weird place, because the circus was there, and my father worked for the circus. He did massage therapy for the clowns. So I spent a lot of my time as a child without any friends, going to see practices at the Ringling Brothers circus. religion also played a role. They quickly got us involved in churches, says Lewis, of his parents. We went to some strange Baptist churches. They were very weird. It was just a weird upbringing, because Venice is so full of old people.
Its a long way from clown therapy and Baptist churches to the lovesick pop that Lewis wrote and performed by himself on the upcoming album Forget, but the music has its roots there. I kicked and screamed for a guitar, says Lewis. [My parents] pulled one out of the attic and handed it to me with one string on it, and told me to have at it. A youthful fondness for taping songs off the radio (Boyz II men, Keith Sweat, Toni Braxton. I just loved R&B, Lewis remembers) explains the softer side of Twin Shadow, but the spikier edges can also be traced to a childhood fascination.
A friend of mine who was a skater, he had come over to my house and brought a Sex Pistols VHS tape, says Lewis. I remember that being a turning point, from loving everything that was on the radio to getting into punk rock. From there, he carried his guitar everywhereI remember the first year of high school, you wouldnt see me without it. I brought it to every class, brought it everywhereand moved to Boston, where he fronted a punk band inspired by James Chance and Fugazi.
Lewis then shifted from Boston to Brooklyn. I just moved here because I really liked this girl. I didnt have any job, thats probably why she dumped me, he says with a chuckle. he then made music for a dance company, with which he toured relentlessly, and lived in Berlin and Copenhagen. The album is probably 80 percent recorded by myself at my house, or on tour, he claims. A lot of the record was made in hotel rooms. I was on tour with the dance company, so I was making music on the road a lot.
Forget is due in September on Terrible Records, which is partly run by Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, who helped Lewis shape those sounds. I linked up with Chris well after the songs had been completed, says Lewis. I jumped in with Chris and we just re-recorded stuff that we thought could sound a bit better. he just had a way of taking something that sounded like demos and turning them into a record. But the singer isnt aiming to record that way again. Its lonely; its boring, he says. The next record, Id like to do as differently as possible. Like renting out a very expensive studio and wasting someones money.
Lyrical inspiration for Forget partially came from a bad break-up, but also from a less conventional source: I became obsessed with 70s art house film, and my interpretation of these films, or what I got from these films, is what became the lyrics for this record. One movie that I reference a lot in my writing is The Seventh Seal. This movie Fannie and Alexander, also by Bergman, definitely I reference a lot.
But after recalling his childhood so vividly, the story behind the album title is surprising. Amongst friends, Im known to be the most forgetful person, says Lewis. Thats mostly the issue Im dealing with, never being able to remember anything. The whole record is about that: all the things Ive forgotten, and trying to put them back together again, and taking one last look at them before never looking at them again.
>> Twin Shadow July 22, Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-253- 0036; 8, $8.