Twin Peaks
Wild Onion
Release Date: Aug 5, 2014
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Grand Jury Music
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Album Review: Wild Onion by Twin Peaks
Very Good, Based on 11 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
There’s a temptation to tag Twin Peaks along with fellow Chicago kids The Orwells. Both bands bring a ravaged mentality to nostalgia-led rock ’n roll. They hang out, play the same low-key and high-profile songs - they even once set up a joint Tumblr, full of crude tour jokes. But while Mario Cuomo and co.
Based on rating 8/10
Twin Peaks sound like a cross between a band and a youth gang on their debut album, Wild Onion. The quartet of 19-year-olds plays with all the abandon and energy of a bunch of kids on the last day of school; half the songs sound like they were written and recorded as the bandmembers charged down the steps after the last bell. Vocals are enthusiastically ragged and rowdy, drums are bashed as much as played, the guitars meld together wildly like streams of water in a super-soaker fight.
Based on rating 7.5/10
"Thought it sounded cool." There—we got the band name out of the way. Fair enough. Nope, you'll find no backwards-voiced, creepily dancing little people here. Unless that describes you. In which case high-five, shimmy in here and—actually, don't; that's creepy. Instead let's let loose with some ….
Based on rating B
To be fair, they warned you. In a January interview with NME, Twin Peaks revealed that they were going big on their second album, Wild Onion. This was a good six or seven months before the album’s release date, but the band wasn’t shy about name-dropping some pretty powerful reference points. “It’s all over the place,” the band teased about the new record.
Based on rating 7/10
Growing up can be a difficult proposition. At a certain point, we are expected to leave behind our juvenile leanings and predilections in favor of more adult-oriented fair. Easier for some than others, the maturation process can provide fairly interesting evolutionary results as we find ourselves trapped between who we were and who we want to be, developing individual personalities cobbled together from a host of external influences.
Based on rating 6.9/10
The Chicago rock band Twin Peaks spend half their time as a chugging power chord factory and half as a winsome power-pop band. Their first album, Sunken, which ran a compact twenty minutes and was as refreshing and ephemeral as a popped Schlitz can, contained hints of both. Their second, Wild Onion, is more than twice the length, in which they seem to be offering two distinct versions of themselves: in one, they're good-times party rockers, and in the other they're heartbroken sweethearts.
Based on rating 3/5
These Chicago garage-pop kids weren't even born when Twin Peaks went off the air, but their love of ancient cultures goes back even further. On their second record, the spunky quartet pull off Exile-era Stones strut and Velvet Underground guitar poesy with sophistication that's beyond their years, and a sense of humor, too. On "Making Breakfast," they play at being Lil' Jaggers, "sitting in the back of a limousine/Just going to a show." Then they turn around and poke fun at their ambitions in "Sloop Jay D," when an unnamed girl tells singer-bassist Jack Dolan, "Don't be a fucking phony." Don't listen to her, dude; you're a tremendous phony.
Based on rating 6/10
Head here to submit your own review of this album. I can't quite remember the last time the name of a new band threw me for a loop in quite the same way Twin Peaks' has. It's not just that they've been so brazenly unoriginal as to lift their moniker from the title of an iconic TV series - perhaps they'll be followed, sooner than later, by The Mad Men or The Desperate Housewives - it's that this particular series has been cited by a countless number of bands as an influence on their work, largely thanks to Angelo Badalamenti's evocative score.
Opinion: Excellent
Before the 2013 release of Twin Peaks’ debut album Sunken, three of its four members dropped out of their first semester of college to return home to Chicago and reform the band. Having amassed a sizable local following with their raucous live shows and doing some flirting with national press coverage, the youngsters’ decision, while risk-filled, had ample upside. Following successful stints at SXSW, a U.S.
Opinion: Excellent
Some bands will change your life. You know the ones. The moments when you listen to a record and experience what can only be described as an epiphany. Those instances are both joyous and rare, in fact, their elusiveness only makes them all the more delicious. We all remember those moments. Exactly ….
Opinion: Very Good
Here’s another solid crew from a rumbling Chicago cracked-pop demi-scene (Space Raft, Nones, Heavy Times) that feels like the usually weirder, record-collecting, $3. 50 beer-fed, Midwest answer to the sunnier trash-pop sounds going down in Oakland and L. A.
'Wild Onion'
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