Twisted Teens – The Holy Cross Tigers (“Loser” Edition, Coloured vinyl)

Twisted Teens didn’t really exist before it made its debut, an initially obscure classic that will almost certainly come to be called The Orange Album. The pair were, instead, neighbors in New Orleans’ Holy Cross neighborhood, where their confederation of complicated misfits pays little attention to the magnolia-loving, beignet-popping tourist board version of their city because it means they get to make art under the radar, off the books, in their own way. RJ was playing steel in a half-dozen country and Cajun bands, maybe doing four gigs a night and practicing or painting when he wasn’t on one of those; he was and is itinerant, hopping trains and these days planes to paint signs near the Arctic Circle when someone has work. Caspian, meanwhile, had played in wild-child anarcho acts on the folk fringes, forgoing electricity and technology for much of his 20s to live in an illegal shack inside a state park.

Here it is, Twisted Teens’ moment of selling out to the big, bad indie rock machine, to their Sub Pop debut, The Holy Cross Tigers, or The Burgundy Album. Sorry to disappoint the skeptics, but these 13 songs were written and recorded in much the same way as their predecessors. RJ lives behind Caspian’s house now, but Caspian is the early riser. He’ll get out of bed, play the guitar until he finds a riff that feels good, put down a drum machine line, and play guitar and bass over it until the tune starts to lock into place. When RJ has finally found his first cup of coffee, and if he’s not off near the Arctic, he sits down and responds with his steel. The condenser mic goes above the kit, the podcast mic in the kick—real big-money stuff these days, going down in Holy Cross.