Twisted Teens – The Holy Cross Tigers | Album Review
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Sub Pop Records
Sometimes it is easy to forget how important other people are to your own survival. It is easy to get so wrapped up in your own shit that you forget you can ask for help. At least, I know I can lose sight of that sometimes. But when I’m listening to Twisted Teens, I’m grateful for everyone I know.
After first contact with Twisted Teens, many people seem to have the same reaction: a need to share the band with anyone who will listen. For good reason too, their orange-hued self-titled debut is one of those records that, when it is over, you won’t be able to shut up about. Take the chorus on the semi-self-titled opening salvo “Twisted Teen” or the hard stop in the middle of a guitar solo at the end of “Twisted Teen.” Sorry, I suppose I should clarify: you will be a convert before the first song even ends. You won’t even need to hear the whole record to know you have at least one person in your life who needs to hear this.
I personally caught the Twisted Teens bug after the hosts of Punk This Week spoke about Blame The Clown, the band’s green sophomore album, when it finally hit wide release earlier this year. What instantly struck me about Blame The Clown is how laid-back it sounds. Each of the record’s 12 songs feels loose, as if you are hearing them played for the first time, like the band is following their impulses wherever they may lead and recording it directly to tape. Luckily, every impulse is the right one. I was playing my roommate “Not Real” the other night and was so excited for her to hear the moment in the middle of the song when an iPhone alarm goes off and Twisted Teens frontman Caspian Hollywell responds: “You hear that alarm? / it means it’s time to wake the fuck up.” That could be the stupidest thing I have ever heard, and yet it is perfect! I love it!
Twisted Teens bassist Sonya Badigian explains the band’s philosophy well in a recent interview with Nina Corcoran in Pitchfork: “Everything is deeply funny, but it’s not exactly a joke.” On “Not Real,” Hollywell is singing about the psychic damage of eliding yourself in pursuit of ease. As a trans woman, I am deeply familiar with this tradeoff and am constantly haunted by the consequences of this gambit. I can laugh at the alarm because it seriously is time to wake up. “Not Real” is a piece of power pop perfection, and the rest of Blame The Clown, from the circumcision ripper “I Operate” to the kiss-off “Circus Clown,” is full of sublimity for those with ears to hear.
What makes this band’s feat on Blame the Clown even more impressive is how quickly they followed it up. In the second week of July, they announced, and days later released, their blue album, Florida Water Blues, a darker counterpoint to the often-jubilant Blame the Clown. There are still jokes, but the predominant mood on Florida Water Blues is one of feeling a slight detachment from your surroundings. “Hand Me a Cigarette” finds Hollywell yearning for a path through life that feels true. On the album closer “Sun Go Down,” he sings about how he “can smell situations about to go south” and describes that desolate feeling of the bar lights coming up, revealing you haven’t escaped the world with one night of fun. “Sun Go Down” is mournful, but that’s the thing: it wouldn’t be sad if it wasn’t so god damn beautiful. And life is beautiful thanks to those around you, isn’t it? Hollywell obviously loves his community, as you can feel on the title track when he yells out for Ramon “RJ” Santos to “focus on where your spirits are” and for Mel Billiard to “make ‘em quake” with his guitar solo that follows. “Florida Water Blues,” and every other Twisted Teens song, wouldn’t be what they are without the fingerprints of Santos and the rest of the communal Teens.
Not a band to ever leave their audience settled, when Florida Water Blues was announced, there were already rumblings about a forthcoming maroon album. A maroon breakup album, even. Alright, here is where I play my hand and reveal that since the last Twisted Teens album, I broke up with my girlfriend of eight years. This review of The Holy Cross Tigers is going to get a little personal essay-ie, but The Holy Cross Tigers invites it.
The lead single, “When We First Met,” is an ode to the intoxication of early love. When Hollywell sings “we used to blow up the spot arm and arm together,” I’m reminded of a moment eight years ago when, at the very start of our relationship, my ex and I went out to dinner with my friends. I thought we played it cool, that, while we obviously were in love, we could still spread our attention to our friends… that is, until our waitress pointed out that we hadn’t stopped holding hands since we sat down. We stopped holding hands a couple of years in. I’d reach for her as we walked side by side, but pretty quickly she’d detach if she even let me reach her.
But when that memory comes up while listening, it isn’t tainted by all the hurt that came after. That’s because “When We First Met” is a full-tilt rocker, the kind of song that refuses to give you space to ponder what it brings to mind. It’s the perfect example of the second half of Badigian’s quote from earlier: “The point is to get everyone to dance, then to realize something, then go back to dancing.” In that, the band doesn't stray from the garagey roots and roll sound that made up their last three albums. The focus is still on blown-out guitars, a mix of programmed and live drums, Santos’ tasteful console steel playing, and Hollywell’s hoarse yelps that somehow go down smooth. And fuck yeah, because Twisted Teens’ sound is downright fun.
They really do know how to get you dancing. Even “I Spend My Time Crying,” a song about, well, it’s in the title, is one I want to hear on the dance floor, pressed up against someone new. I want to jump up and down at the climax of “Figure It Out” when the steel moves from a supporting character to leading a free-flying melody. That steel guitar will always be the defining trait of Twisted Teens. The band wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting as they are if Santos weren’t behind Hollywell’s syllable-cramming verses on “Look In The Mirror” or writhing and wilting around the melody of “Every Flower.”
When the Teens do stray from their familiar sound, they end up writing their most beautiful and unsettling song. While “Sun Go Down” ended Florida Water Blues on a reflective acoustic note, “Darker The Night Is The Brighter I See” is a haunting acoustic piece. The band joked in their Pitchfork profile that, when they signed to Sub Pop, they had to put a grunge song on the album. “Darker The Night…” was the result of that impulse and is Twisted Teens’ version of “Something In The Way,” a massive comedown of a closer. I can’t listen to “Darker The Night…” without being held wrapped by the warbly chorus supporting Hollywell and the heavy strums of his guitar. The song starts with a distorted recording of people joking about whether they are being recorded or not, and that sets the mood entirely. Up until the end of the record, you could almost believe Hollywell is over this relationship, but there is just something about his delivery that doesn’t fully sell it.
On “Be An Angel,” when Hollywell declares “I’m not angry / I’m confused as why I’m knowin’ you so long,” I think about all the times I’ve told friends I’m over it while knowing full well I’m pissed. This tension is set up explicitly on the opening track as he sings about yarrow, a flower that used to be used in medicine, before “wallow[ing] in bloody business.” The mask slips entirely on “Darker The Night….” When Hollywell starts singing, and the chatter ends, it is like watching someone slip away from a party, the idea of any company more harmful than lonesomeness. In his corner, he sings about the duality of hope: you only need it in the darkest of times.
As I slept on my ex’s couch, I thought I had destroyed my life. Dead broke, with nothing guarding me from destitution, I still got up every day with the dream of someday being in the light. Of finally having the room of my own I'd wanted for so long. It helped that friends crawled out of the woodwork to demand I sleep on their couch, volunteer to help me move, buy me a slice of pizza, or just lend an ear to vent. It didn’t strike me that it happened—I knew I had good people in my life—but the sheer quantity of them. I didn’t know I had that many good friends. That large of a community. With no community, where would I be? That’s why this album is named after the high school in Hollywell’s beloved town. The Holy Cross Tigers is an ode to the people you see every day and who keep you going. The Holy Cross Tigers is about the people you do it for.
That is why it is important to note that The Holy Cross Tigers isn’t just a breakup album. Two of the record’s best tracks focus on Twisted Teens’ other perennial topic: doing the right thing. “Lock and Key” tells an on-the-ground story of a snitch giving it up for the police while “Armed With A Vision” takes a more poetic course to discuss moral clarity: “and this vision is a gun fired on confusion.” Across all the songs in Twisted Teens’ discography that address living truly, confusion is the root of the problems. It even stretches back to Hollywell’s time fronting Blackbird Raum when the gang vocals chant “they’re shooting the wolves from helicopters / can you believe that?” Our world has grown increasingly complex and has divorced us from the things that matter most, namely being a good person and a member of your community. “Armed With A Vision” is a rallying cry to not let confusion determine your life and pull you away from your fellow man.
Breakups are deeply destabilizing events, even when they are “mutual,” like mine was. I’m sure the same is true for Hollywell. Maybe that’s why he constantly sings about being a good person and doing right: he’s trying to live up to what his community has given him. Hell, that might be why Twisted Teens prompt such dedicated proselytizers: people resonate with that need to be good in their bones. What else are you supposed to do with that urge but share?
Lillian Weber is a fake librarian in NYC. She writes about gender, music, and other inane thoughts on her Substack, all my selves aligned. You can follow her on Insta @Lilllianmweber.
