It makes sense that
Twin Shadow, aka
George Lewis, Jr., worked with
Grizzly Bear's
Chris Taylor on his debut album,
Forget.
Lewis' croon sounds uncannily like
Grizzly Bear vocalists
Edward Droste and
Daniel Rossen -- when it’s not reaching
Morrissey-like heights on songs such as the excellently lovelorn “Slow,” that is. And though
Twin Shadow is included among the chillwave movement,
Forget’s soft but sparkling, bedroom-quality recordings have as much in common with
Grizzly Bear's pre-
Yellow House output as they do with
Ariel Pink. On the surface,
Lewis' lush, intricate pop certainly shares a lot with chillwave icons like
Pink and
Neon Indian, such as the woozy keyboards dappled throughout the album, but there’s more to
Twin Shadow than that.
Forget's songs are undeniably nostalgic, yet they often sound like they could be blurred by a veil of tears just as easily as a fog of memories. When
Lewis sings about summer, the ultimate chillwave subject, on “I Can’t Wait,” there are still ghosts and shadows lurking in the background. Indeed,
Forget’s darkest songs, where
Lewis mixes love and pain fearlessly, are the most distinctive. “Tyrant Destroyed” opens the album with a trembling confessional, mingling yearning and self-loathing in lyrics like “As if it wasn’t enough to hear you speak, they had to give you lips like that” as the drums pound like a nervous heartbeat. “Castles in the Snow”'s brooding romance and massed harmonies position it somewhere between
Grizzly Bear and
TV on the Radio, while on the suave “When We’re Dancing,” when
Lewis sings “Is your cheek still red from where you caught the hand/Or are you just in love again?,” it puts unsettling cracks in the song’s glamorous façade.
Twin Shadow already compares favorably to
Lewis' chillwave peers, but
Forget suggests he has much more to offer once that trend fades away.