Maybe it isn't entirely fair to handcuff records to weather patterns and seasons. Anyone who's ever synched up a Beach Boys track to a spitting blizzard gets that those kinds of temporal assignments can be awfully limiting, but there's something intensely beach-blanket/windows-down about Twice-- the Tyde's snarkily-titled follow-up to their 2001 debut Once-- that seems to make pigeonholing inevitable. Boasting all the smooth, amber glow of a Beachwood Sparks record (evidence three overlapping members), but hardly any of Beachwood's salty, shaking twang, Twice evokes only the clearest of deep, California skies, all crickets and moonlight, warm beer and bonfires, sticky fingers and splintering boardwalks. Pack it in a bag with your sandy beach towels and cracked goggles, surf wax and weed; dewy, power-popped, and properly hooked, Twice is culled from glossy picture postcards and cheap hotel rooms. It's forty minutes of straight summer soundtrack.
Thematically, Twice marries the 60s psych-pop of Once with late-70s/early-80s cult jams, incorporating big nods to Felt and Television Personalities, relying less heavily on blatant homage to the Flying Burrito Brothers and Buffalo Springfield, and finding room for a single, victorious holler to the Velvets: "Henry VIII" finds frontman Darren Rademaker twisting his mouth into his best Lou Reed glower, shouting about the impossibility of life with/without drugs ("We just won't stop/ We don't stop/ Sometimes everybody needs a friend") and layering thick, jangly guitars over spare, jumpy percussion. Rademaker's carefully effects-laden vocals occasionally sputter like a less pouty Julian Casablancas', deliberately retro but still intensely likeable, all lazy nuance and mellow sighs.
There's not too much here to knock the sprinkles off your ice cream cone, but Twice is an impressively consistent and well- crafted collection: "Best Intentions" is five minutes of slow, artful meandering, languid and peaceably anchored by lilting guitar while "Blood Brothers" (despite the fairly wince-inducing lyric "Do you want to know what it feels like to be a man?/ Try spending twenty-five years in a band") is a rousing, organ-riddled salute to old- fashioned, back-slapping brotherhood.
The Tyde have effectively shifted British post-punk from the dim, rainy streets of England to the broad, sunny avenues of California, trading vague melancholy for relaxed grins. Rhodes, piano, lap steel and synths add some interesting textures, but Twice still suffers from the predictability inherent in direct transplantation-- nearly every track can be quickly linked back to the artist or year that inspired it, and while the Tyde's contemporary re-interpretations are perfectly pleasant, they're not always compelling enough to let the shameless co-opting pass unnoticed. Like summer itself, Twice is peripheral, contingent upon the other eight months of the year for its bold existence, destined to be remembered, come autumn, as a fleeting, sweet, and delightfully innocuous burst of light.
