Following up 2012's
A Hound at the Helm, which was reissued by DFA Records in 2014,
Slim Twig's fourth full-length album
Thank You for Stickin' with Twig is a step up in terms of recording fidelity as well as ambition. It comes off as less of a pastiche than his previous efforts, focusing on a slow, druggy, swirling glam rock sound and largely dispensing with the rockabilly elements of his earlier work. The album features ornate instrumentation from a cast of over a dozen guest musicians, most notably including bassist
Michael Rault and
Slim Twig's wife, vocalist Meg Remy of
U.S. Girls. There's a bit of a baroque, orchestral pop sound to the arrangements, especially on the could-be-longer interlude "She Stickin' with Twig" (which even features electric harpsichord) and the strings throughout most of the record's first half. "Roll Red Roll (Song for Steubenville)" is a five-minute epic that takes a few minutes to build up with flutes and hissy, library music-sounding synths before tapping into the crunchy wah-wah fuzz guitar sound present throughout the album and trudging through a slow, trippy, almost dubby beat. Songs like "Fadeout Killer" offer up an almost nightmarishly psychedelic vision of bubblegum pop, and they're countered by the eerie, hyper-distorted instrumental prog rock of "Trip Thru Bells." A ghostly, slowed-down sample of
the Chi-Lites' "Stoned Out of My Mind" appears as an interlude twice during the album.
Slim Twig concludes the disc with an extended jam on
Serge Gainsbourg's "Cannabis" (from his soundtrack to the 1970 film of the same name), doubling the song's length and adding several layers of crushing distorted guitar as well as backing vocals (in place of the original's French lyrics) and a screeching saxophone solo. On
Thank You for Stickin' with Twig,
Slim Twig takes full advantage of his limited recording resources (the liner notes state that the album is mostly home-recorded) in order to create his most original-sounding work to date. ~ Paul Simpson