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The project of multi-faceted artist
George Lewis, Jr.,
Twin Shadow music runs the gamut from chillwave to anthemic, '80s-inspired pop to sunny homages to his Dominican roots. On 2010's acclaimed debut
Forget, the singer/songwriter/producer/actor brought a distinctive depth to chillwave's haze, then forged a romantic, dramatic style indebted to synth pop and new wave on albums such as 2012's
Confess and 2018's
Caer. By the time of 2021's
Twin Shadow,
Lewis' music drew as much inspiration from Bachata and vintage soul as from his previous influences, but his passionate songwriting and powerful vocals remained at the forefront of his sound.
Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Florida,
Lewis began singing in his church choir and learned to play the saxophone. While living in Boston in the early 2000s, he played in the punk band Mad Man Films (which also included
Hooray for Earth's Joesph Ciampini and Before Lazers' Zak Longo) before moving to Brooklyn and beginning
Twin Shadow in 2006.
Lewis' demos caught the attention of
Grizzly Bear's
Chris Taylor, who produced and released
Twin Shadow's November 2010 debut album
Forget on his Terrible label. While spending much of 2010 and 2011 touring,
Lewis also found time to record
Twin Shadow's second full-length,
Confess, in Los Angeles. Inspired by a motorcycle crash he survived during his Boston days -- as well as his own unpublished novel, Night of the Silver Sun -- the self-produced album boasted a glossier sound and more direct songwriting than his debut. Upon its release in July 2012,
Confess debuted on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart at number 54 and reached number 18 on the Top Rock Albums chart.
Lewis moved farther into pop on March 2015's Eclipse, a power-ballad-heavy set of songs that marked
Twin Shadow's Warner Bros. debut. That April,
Lewis and his band and crew were in a tour-bus crash that left him with hand injuries requiring reconstructive surgery. While healing, he went through his archive of unreleased songs and compiled the best ones into the Night Rally mixtape, which arrived in July 2015.
Twin Shadow spent much of the rest of 2015 touring, while
Lewis composed the music for the 2016 and 2016 New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer runway shows for the fashion line Public School. Early in 2018,
Twin Shadow returned with "Saturdays," a collaboration with HAIM that heralded the release of his fourth album,
Caer, in April. That October,
Lewis issued the Hollow Days EP, a set of songs reflecting the influence of Bachata music, on his own Cheree Cheree label. He closed out the year with December's Broken Horses EP, which continued in the same vein as Hollow Days.
Twin Shadow remained prolific the following year, issuing the singles "Only for the Broken-Hearted," "Truly," and "Crushed," and "Walk Forever by My Side," which appeared on the soundtrack to the third season of the Netflix show
13 Reasons Why. In 2021,
Lewis appeared on
Xiu Xiu's album
Oh No and delivered
Twin Shadow's self-titled fifth album that June. Recorded in part at the Dominican Republic's FAMA Studios,
Twin Shadow featured a cameo by
Kadhja Bonet as well as homages to the punk, soul, and the Dominican sounds that he heard in his youth. ~ Heather Phares