Twin Library “We Never Reached The Mountains.” From the album The Abandoned Reel (2012)
Posted May 22, 2012 at 8:57pm in twin library abandoned reel we never reached the mountains edmonton
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Grayowl Point reviews The Abandoned Reel
Review – “The Abandoned Reel” – Twin Library
reviewed by Laura Stanley 
When I was first introduced to Twin Library it was through their short release, Softer Seasons. A charming collection of gritty, lo-fi folk-pop songs, Softer Season had a lightness to it despite the heavy sound. Where The Abandoned Reel has the same lo-fi folky sound, the lightness, for the most part, has been replaced by more melancholic tunes.
A whooping fourteen-song offering, The Abandoned Reel is just another notch in the extensive back-catalogue of Twin Library, continuing to seem almost effortless for this Edmonton band to make simple but worthy songs.
“The Dark Ships” begins The Abandoned Reel off with one minute and forty-six seconds of the more reckless side of Twin Library. Filled with distortion in a more rock outing, “The Dark Ships” perfectly sets the tone for the darkness of the album.
“I See You’ve Got Horses” and “A Country Heart” which both have lyrical nods to country life, also have heavily sombre tones. “I See You’ve Got Horses” has a thundering percussion section while “A Country Heart” has a lulling picked-guitar part and the addition of a violin in the chorus, allowing both songs to be able to fit in the album nicely.
But it’s not all gloom in The Abandoned Reel. Despite the minimalistic recording, one of the things that I think is so great about Twin Library is their ability to write a short and sweet folk-pop song. “Has my drinking improved since I last saw you?” the opening line from “A Great Song,” a title which speaks the truth, asks. “When I First Heard The Train” and “Nighthawk USA” are more of the same short but poppy gems.
“Archives” is one of the more multi-faceted songs from the album including several guitar parts overlapping for a very warm sound. Speaking to a past love, the story behind the lyrics make them the strongest from The Abandoned Reel.
Twin Library’s continual ability to generate lo-fi folk pop songs is impressive to say the least, and The Abandoned Reel is another addition to the already good collection.
Luckily, Twin Library have a penchant for creating minimally recorded, hastily released indie rock. The fact that the band have put out a whopping eight albums (with the first four recorded as the Public Library) since 2008 has allowed these Edmontonians to properly find their identity and sharpen their craft. The all-in method of lo-fi recording, often employed by Guided by Voices, Jim Guthrie and Eric’s Trip, has benefitted Twin Library’s latest, The Abandoned Reel, vastly. Over 14 intimate and sombre recordings, tracks like fuzzed-out strummer “The Dark Ships” and the haunted, 4AD-like “A Country Heart” feel organic and sincere despite the obvious genre nods. As the brittle melody and chorus-aided violin of “Snow” clashes with the too-high-in-the-mix tambourine of “It Means So Little to Me,” it’s the mood of The Abandoned Reel that allows such clangers to come off as character builders. On their eighth try, Twin Library have managed to deliver a uniform feel, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a butterfly.
— The Abandoned Reel review in Exclaim. April 2012
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reviewed on Quick Before It Melts
There’s a certain connotation that comes with a title like The Abandoned Reel, that the collection of songs therein are fragments, half-finished ideas that get ditched before they end up in the ditch. Edmonton’s Twin Library smash that notion swiftly within the first few seconds of their new album (called The Abandoned Reel if that wasn’t plainly obvious already). While some of the songs are just short blasts of garage folk (that’s what I’m gonna call call it) less than two minutes long, there’s a deep well of experimentation and ideas within each, never sounding rushed or incomplete. Twin Library are honest that some of The Abandoned Reel are new songs, written and recorded for the album, alongside older songs that have been given a new lease on life, but there’s not a cut-and-paste feel, like they’ve tried to stitch things together to make a whole. The Abandoned Reel is the real deal, and Twin Library have dealt us a winning hand in it. For anyone who like their fi set lo and their pop loose and jangly, pick up Twin Library’s latest and give it a good home.
“The Dark Ships” from The Abandoned Reel by Twin Library.
Posted April 13, 2012 at 8:23am in twin library abandoned reel dark ships edmonton alberta san francisco lo-fi indie
Posted April 4, 2012 at 1:12pm in twin library abandoned reel yeg edmonton alberta music indie lo-fi
Twin Library “When I First Heard The Train”. From the new album The Abandoned Reel (April 2012).
Posted February 22, 2012 at 9:05pm in twin library abandoned reel train edmonton alberta lo-fi indie
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The Heavy Drag cracks the Top 100
The Heavy Drag hits the number 97 spot on CJSR’s Top 100 for 2011. That’s one better than Tom Waits.
Posted December 13, 2011 at 8:14pm in big takeover twin library heavy drag alberta edmonton lo-fi indie
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