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“You can’t teach an old man a new way/Well, that’s the biggest excuse I’ve heard in a while,” Sean Raasch sings on the new Twin Brother album, A.I. He’s singing specifically about the misogyny that’s baked into our culture and the thin justifications that men make for it, but the lyrics could easily be slotted into just about any song on the record and make sense. Themes of change and self-improvement dominate the album. On song after song, Raasch sings of growing up, moving on, letting go and unmooring himself from the past.
It’s no mystery why he’s in that headspace. Since Twin Brother disbanded then reemerged as a solo project on last year’s Rightfully So, Raasch has been making the most of the situation, adapting to being a one-man band as best he can.
“It’s has its own unique struggles,” he says of learning to play and record virtually everything himself. “It’s involved a lot of admitting what I’m not good at, then committing to learning it. Like bass guitar. I know I’m no good at bass guitar, so I have to work at it. There’s a lot of trouble shooting involved, and teaching myself how to do certain things. I had to do a lot of research on the proper way to mix things and compress things and master things. It’s not perfect, but it’s my first shot at it.”
A.I. reaps the fruits of that patience and persistence. Where Rightfully So was deliberately naked, so much so that sometimes sounded like a study in absence, A.I. embraces the studio fully, creatively toying with overdubs and flourishes. The result is Twin Brother’s most varied album yet, with highlights like the woozily soulful “Shimmer” and the rollicking “Roll Over” that feel like the product of a live band.
“I’m just trying to diversify and have different types of ideas and not be locked on to one sound,” Raasch says. “There are a couple of songs where it almost sounds like I’m rapping, because I was almost trying to rap. I didn’t want to sound like gangsta rap or something, but when we did that Local Coverage concert and we covered Klassik, I had to rap, and I choose to take that on, because I wanted to challenge myself. So I wanted to try that for a song. All it was really was using a lot more words so it’s easier to get a point across because you have more to work with. It really works. All the attention is on you because you’re doing the vocals, and since I’m a rhythm guy anyway I was really drawn to that.”
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You can stream A.I. below, via Bandcamp.
