Twin Sister : In Heaven

In Heaven is the debut LP from Long Island's Twin Sister and it's quite a poppy affair. Following on from their 2010 Color Your Life EP - the album has a soft airiness to it which makes the songs seem to drift in and out of one another. There's a similar mood throughout the album, this congruency is effective in part, but the lack of diversity tends to bore me a little. The production is very clean, almost sterile, creating a certain lack of urgency in the delivery of the songs. It's pretty safe music is what I'm getting at - electronic pop with synthetic drum beats, flourishes of guitar and token 'quirky' female vocals. Singer Andrea Estella's voice sounds familiar; it's the kind of voice you've heard before, probably in music quite similar to this. Estella does, however, play with a few genres in her delivery - there are traces of rnb and disco evident on the Wordy Rappinghood-esque Bad Street, Spain has a cinematic, mariachi-like feel whilst Gene Ciampi is a spaghetti western pastiche, complete with jangly guitar line and a flourish of organ. But at the end of the day this is straight indie pop and even with these influences still manages to sound like it. On Saturday, Sunday Estella sings, "Please give me tongue/My life is no fun/My weekends are loveless and dull" - it's so twee it hurts. Throughout the album there is a sense of this straightforward lyricism, there's no reading between the lines here but somehow this works to effect. The ultra clean production takes over as the voice is merely another studio tool, the sometimes over-use of vocoder is evident on tracks Space Babe and Kimmi In A Rice Field although perhaps that is the desired effect. As an album In Heaven isn't so bad, it's just not very exciting - although scoring a 7.8 on Pitchfork, I think it's perhaps a little too safe for most Australian listeners.

BY CASSANDRA KIELY

Best Track: Spain

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In A Word: Beige