Brooklyn’s George Lewis Jr. released his first album as Twin Shadow, Forget, in 2010; its washed-out production and indebtedness to atmospheric new-wave pop got it lumped in with the emergent chillwave scene, though Lewis’s R&B leanings and mannered image made the label an uneasy fit. Recently 4AD, the label that picked up Forget from Terrible Records (run by Grizzly Bear multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor, who also produced the album), released its follow-up, Confess. Inspired in part by a vintage motorcycle Lewis owns, Confess is more confident and fleshed out, and lives up to the frequent comparisons he’s attracted to Prince and Depeche Mode.
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I feel like you’re a little bit further along in your music career than me, for sure. Do you have any day job unrelated to your passion for music, or do you make your living off being an artist? I’ve been making enough money to live off music for like four years now. I actually was making money off music before Twin Shadow, but I kind of considered it a day job because I didn’t really love it. I composed music for a dance company—that was my day job.
That’s awesome. I’ve enjoyed all forms of performance since I was little, so that’s really cool. Did you dance as well ever, or just compose the music? When I was a kid my parents used to make me take dance lessons with my sisters. I grew up with three sisters who were all dancers and still are, so it was just kind of around me all the time.
That’s awesome. I’m kind of the same way. I was in a band doing percussion in grade school and I had some piano lessons from my grandma, but besides that I taught myself. Have you read that book This Is Your Brain on Music? It’s written by a neurologist/musician, and he talks about how if you’re taught any music as a child it kind of wires your brain so you’re always in touch with it if you go back at a later age. I thought that was really cool. You should check out that book. It has a ton of really interesting stuff about music and how our brains react to it. So were there a lot of obstacles you had to overcome in getting your music career to where it is? Certainly. I mean playing instruments was never a challenge for me. It always came pretty easy. It just seemed like something I was supposed to do. I learned how to play the saxophone really early on; I just taught myself that. The real obstacles were, like, how to put your personality into the music or how to connect to the actual “you” and expressing that through music. That took a long time to figure out, I think, for me. Those were really huge obstacles.
I find it hard to find people who want to play my music instead of making new music with me. That’s kind of what my issue has been so far, but I’m slowly building a band. Everyone wants to be a star.
Thu 8/2, 9 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, RSVP at filtermagazine.com/lolla2012, free.
Twin Shadow at Lollapalooza
Sat 8/4, 7:15 PM, Grant Park, Google Play stage, sold out, all ages.
