The Valley Advocate
Bombpop Got to Admit, It's Gettin' Better
by Sean Glennon Published, 7/25/2002

Now I'm starting to feel satisfied. Now I can sit back for a while and enjoy this last month or so of summer. Now, that is, that I don't have to worry so much about 2002 turning out to be a worse year for popular music than it's been for the stock market. Three weeks ago I wasn't so sure. There have been some good records released this year -- a couple of them very good -- but they've been fewer and farther between than in the previous couple of years. And while there's some promising stuff on the horizon, there's little chance it'll be enough to bring the year up even. So I'd got to thinking it'd be nice if, come December, I could look back at a year that was at least sort of satisfying some of the time. Four releases over the last two weeks have rather dramatically increased the odds of that.

Twinemen, Twinemen (Hi-N-Dry) -- Surviving Morphine members Dana Colley and Billy Conway team up with Boston scene veteran Laurie Sargent to create a dark, intimate and seductive record that hints at the presence of Mark Sandman's ghost, though you wouldn't say it's haunted by him. While the subtly bluesy elements Sandman brought to Morphine have disappeared as his former collaborators lose themselves in exploration of dance vibes, the late-night, empty-barroom feel that followed Sandman from Treat Her Right to Morphine is very much in evidence here. That feeling is stripped of its lonely qualities, though, because where Sandman's removed, often uninflected vocals served to keep the listener at arm's length, Sargent's pull you closer. There's a mysterious sexiness to Sargent's singing, and a dangerous sense of proximity; you can almost feel her softly breathing the lyrics into your mouth. Colley, meanwhile, employs his signature baritone sax playing in the mode of a snake charmer, rendering punctuated blasts of sound just soft enough around the edges to keep you under his spell. You sway gently for a while until Conway's rhythms take hold, and then you let the music take over your mind and your body. It won't be terribly long before this record starts showing up in sampled bits all over the dance music landscape, which will inevitably change the way the original is heard. So it's probably best to experience the allure and the magic of Twinemen's sound while it's still pure : : :

Twinemen perform at the Iron Horse in Northampton July 31.