23.04.15
Words by:

Across the best part of a decade George Lewis Jr. has concocted and contorted his Twin Shadow alias. His rise from haunted bedroom pop star to full blown anthemic balladeer has earned both praise and derision. He burst into colour in 2010 with Forget, a collection of earnest, lo-fi, new-wave indie that garnered near-universal praise, and his follow up Confess showcased a cleaner vision of 1980s-infused romance. This year’s Eclipse sees him fully traverse musical borders on a foray into polished pop music. Here Lewis breaks down his creative journey into the five points which helped shape Twin Shadow as we know it today.

Circa 1992: Singing in the church choir as a boy

We went to a church where they had all these after school programmes that my friends went to. I was obsessed at the time with Boys II Men, and my parents knew I could sing because I was always singing along at home. When I joined the choir the director, Doug, would get me to try lots of requiems. I only got to perform once or twice but it had a profound effect on me, cause I would go into school and sing requiems to my friends and they’d go “What is that!?” We were all into Biggie and Tupac and stuff [laughs]. It kind of separated me from all my friends!

2000: Forming Mad Man Films

I used go to these jam sessions. One day this guy Zak [Longo] showed up and he was writing actual songs. So I would go over to his house, and he was like the foundation of my learning how to write a song. Shortly after I met him I moved to Boston. A year later he joined me there. Within that year I’d gotten into all this kind of hardcore and punk stuff, and he was resistant but somehow I convinced him to play harder. I got good at guitar and Zak switched to bass. He found a drummer at school and we started to make songs as Mad Man Films. We kinda sounded like Red Hot Chilli Peppers at first, but I wanted to sound like the Contortions.

"I decided that my lyrics needed to be simpler, that I wouldn't talk in code as much"

2010: Recording Forget

In between Mad Man Films and starting Twin Shadow I’d made another record. I never pushed it hard, but that was my transition. This guy [Eddie Bezalel, respected executive producer, A&R and manager] had heard this stuff I had online and he became, and still is, my manager. When I met him I was on the verge of giving up music completely. He was like “Why don’t you work on this more?” He motivated me to work on songs that already existed. After all this talking and discussing and making music, there was a sound developing. There was a month where I wrote all the songs on Forget. My manager gave me a computer and Pro Tools and I used Ableton to produce it. The whole thing was a wild learning process. The end result is that I have this incredible document of my growth.

2013: Hosting a radio station on GTA V

I met a couple guys from Rockstar [Games] at a party for the launch of the game Max Payne, that the band HEALTH did the soundtrack for. One of the guys who I met at the party had heard Old Love, New Love from the new record and wanted it to be in the game. Then they said “We really need this like, pretentious hipster to have this radio station and be this snobby character.” I was excited when I thought I would be able to curate the station, but in fact that was an impossibility because they have to secure licensing. It was actually mostly compiled by Rockstar, but coincidentally many of my peers and many bands and artists I would have chosen ended up on there.

2015: Recording Eclipse

I never want to make the same thing twice. There’s a lot of risk in that because sometimes I think “Just give everyone what they want.” But I myself can’t feel like I’ve progressed unless I’ve made a big shift. I started by looking at the lyrics, I decided the lyrics would be simpler and I wouldn’t try to talk in code as much and try to be as clever, things would be a lot more direct. And just from doing that the music became more direct. As a result I think this record is wider, more open. I’m sure my fans will say it’s more mainstream, but I don’t see that as a negative thing.

Eclipse is release on 18 May via Warner Brothers. Twin Shadow plays Berlin Festival, 31 May