On Repeat: Mr Twin Sister Channels A Different Kind Of Dance Floor in Polvo
Tristan Young @talltristan
Artists and groups are well within their rights to cautiously and procedurally segue from style, genre, and influences over a broad and contemplative arc. Not everyone can pull a Radiohead and go from OK Computer to Kid A. of course not everyone is Mr Twin Sister, and if there’s one thing they’ve proven so acutely over the years is their perpetual metamorphisms are always as confidently vivid and committed as one can imagine. This rings truer than ever with their new track Polvo, an absolutely wild sojourn into Latin and Spanish inspired dance hall. While their previous work has sauntered with an almost intimidating certitude form daydream pop to abstractions in electronica, to staggering future pop, here they shift into the cacophonous mania of percussive samba and El Salvadorian cumbia. Polvo is immediately striking for its scattered and fiercely liberated drum sequencers. Multiple percussive echoes and arpeggios bounce and splash delightfully with playful insouciance. Tangled up in the polymorphic array of sounds are ducking synth slides and guitar plucks so tightly wound they sound like the keys processed at the high end of a moog synthesizer. It’s a lot going on but Mr Twin Sister are masters of curating robust instrumental pallets and weaving them together into something coherent and discernable. Rather than trying to track the complexities of the waveform you can focus on the pure elation of the tonal make up of it all. Vocalist Andrea Estella is once again slyly commanding in their dominatrix style seduction, this time all in blindingly fast Spanish. The lyrics aren’t up on Genius yet but Polvo translates into dust, seemingly a reference to the lyrics (according to Google translate) about how we are fuelled and comprised of dead matter on a near atomic level. A little macabre considering the exuberant mood of the song but maybe they were going for a Day Of The Dead style of subversive celebration. Whatever the intent, it rings through gloriously in the end as gust of glassine secondary vocals covers the track in a pacifying air of euphoria. It’s that moment after the drop when everyone saunters off the dance floor together, knowing they all nailed it.