On Repeat: Dairy By Mr Twin Sister Is Pure Pop Exotica
Tristan Young @talltristan
We’re well aware of unwavering bias in support of Mr Twin Sister, but when their music is this consistently fantastic how can you blame us? MTS has released a pair of excellent tracks on Bandcamp, Dairy and Expressions. The track Dairy in particular ranks among their best along side Out Of The Dark and Echo Arms, not just for the stunning fidelity behind its production, but the otherworldly pop exotica that emerges from its vivid design. Gurgling synth blips create an alien atmosphere while sharply staccato pianos inject a stark sense of intrigue into the beat right away. The specific tempo of the piano is so atypical and non linear, and yet its pulse still radiates a kinetic exhilaration. That energetic charisma is dialled up to a sensory overload as the exotic synth spirals and winds through the gaps with a silken grace and speed. The mixture of croaking synth pads and swirling miasma of more curvaceous sequencers is fascinating. These components expand upon and propel the beat driving piano to create something voluminous and enticingly expansive, but also a melody that barrels ahead with unrelenting pace. The instrumental layout and recombinant mixture of melodic flow and rhythmic accentuation is remarkable, once again earning MTS descriptors like future perfect. Vocalist Andrea Estella’s wispy and glassine exaltations are as seductive as ever. For a group whose inception was distinguished by introverted curiosities, she has progressed to orate with an explicitly domineering and sultry pop cadence that could overwhelm and out manoeuvre the biggest pop stars of the day with ease. Her lush and throaty whispers imply a licentious mystery but her tactic of ending lines with sharply lecturing accentuating turns the whole thing on its head, in a subtly but perpetually destabilizing cycle. When she sings “capture all your moods, could be fun for later”, good lord does she ever prove such a conceit right. As the refrain diverts into a more acute distillation of this idea, “You write it all down”, her voice ejects all weight for pure euphony and Estella highlights just how transformative she can sound. This is even more explicit in the gorgeous and all too brief chorus, “You might like it you might hate it/try not to let anyone take it”. Her voice morphs into a sublime waveform of gorgeously elongated and elaborate delivery. The way she leans into every syllable with such unmitigated commitment is dazzling. As with so much of their work, Dairy proves just how ahead of their contemporaries, and the times itself MTS continues to be.