We all have large expectations, and have a lot of hype, for Twin Sister's debut full length album. While In Heaven sounds more like the trip to heaven, the album starts off strong, really strong. Solid songs that are sure going to be everyone's favorite by the end of winter, the album begins to unfold into an album that becomes more dominated by the large and expansive experimentation of the band than a cohesive marriage between the singer and the music. The band actually does a great job of playing around with new wave german pop that seems to highly influence the album. But In Heaven begins to trickle into a territory where the lead just begins to sing because zhe needed to do something. While there are some moments that are strong and solid here and there, the end of the album just never comes together like "Daniel", "Bad Street" or "Stop". 

7.5 out of 10 little red shoes

Okay so this album came out a long time ago but honestly how many of y'all even bothered to get around to it? Well in all honesty I never really thought of albums by pop stars as something that needed my attention. Possibly it's because of my dad's cynicism when it came to albums in general when I was growing up. Zhe would always remind us that there is probably only one or two good songs (the singles) and the rest was fluff, and to some extent I remember a lot of pop star albums like that. I mean in the past all one was allowed to buy were the singles, like the actual single of a song on a disc or tape, or the entire album. Keep in mind that until the internet we funded a lot of bullshit simply because we had to gamble everytime we wanted to get a piece of someone's current body of work. Now keep in mind that not many pop stars - that are on the radio, that are marketed highly, and who happen to be mega-celebs - have a vision or an album that most people would deem as groundbreaking. Most of the times the indie and or less popular peeps do that. 

Okay, so for that reason I never got into any of Britney's discography, I mean I was simply stereotyping these people as dolts who have great teams that build their career. It wasn't until I found out and heard Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope that I thought that maybe not all people on the radio are dolts--so it lead me into a path where I was listening to everyone's album. And the majority of the time I was like, bleh. But it wasn't until I heard Femme Fatale that I started looking at Britney Spears as either knowing of how amazing she is, or just being blessed by having a great team. While many people reviewed this album saying that it was a nice production team and that everyone else made Britney sound like that, I found it hard to believe that maybe she was oblivious to what was going on. I think it's easy for any of us to write off someone who sings about the same themes over and over again (tequila on the rocks) and someone who is a celebrity. For myself listening at the really solid tracks off of Femme Fatale lead me to think about the significance of a pop star in the industry, not as a public global figure. Industry wise I used to think, and to some extent I still do, that voices and people are interchangeable. But Britney's been around for almost a decade, she went "mental", zhe's nearly 30, zhe can't dance as well anymore because of an injury and zhe has children. Now just think about all the stereotypes of what people say is only allowed in the industry, and zhe broke all of them--so to me zhe is to some extent either a brand that is too expensive to replace or zhe brings something. Well In this new album I feel like even if zhe isn't as vocally present, it takes a lot of restraint, especially in dance music, to allow your vision to succeed. I mean there's diva house and everything but a lot of the time songs don't call to over compete with beats, breaks, dub screams, etc. But to say that Britney is utterly just speaking or being over produced wouldn't give great credit to zher at all. On tracks such as "Big Fat Bass", "Criminal" and "Trip To Your Heart" there is clearly a great amount of minimalism on zher behalf to act coquettishly while slurring you into the hypnotism of the song. 

On another note, maybe I am just as impressed by this album because I never expected much of anything from zher and this album clearly gives a good amount of "fuck you's" to people that were cunts to Britney ("I Wanna Go") all while staying in this state of "oh i'm just an airhead but I did just tell you to fuck off". Below are all the tracks that were keepers in my book, the deluxe edition features three other songs--one which was kinda growing on me and the other two just not worthy of being on the album.

8.2 out of 10 little red shoes

 

I had an incredibly difficult time reviewing this album and I received it like a month ago. 

ex:

Not gonna lie to y'all this was tough because I was confused by how beautiful the album is. Track after track the way the band plays and how well it was captured on the recording is far from the more low-fi settings that I remember Girls from. In fact this album sounds solidly expensive, in a music industry sort of expensive. The expensive you get from actually working with engineers and having the mastering, etc. Not only are the way the band is performing track after track solid, so is Christopher's voice. But far from just being a somewhat gimmicky ode to a "past-sound" that so many critics are painting this album out to be, the album is more of this intense intimate collection of songs about someone who you love, don't love, who you see go away, who you want back. The album itself has songs like "Vomit" that were written as songs before the full formation of the band but together they just create a portrait of another love album. In some ways it felt like the soundtrack to the antithesis of the typical Californian stereotype that we think of when it comes to that lifestyle. Girls' world seems to be more rugged, working class and full of love trials. But I guess when you're fighting for the love of your life to stay with you, or just suffering any emotion from love--it never matters where you're at. It will hurt and bring you right back to your most primal of states; stripping you away from accolades, achievement, life position, location and anything that you thought made you invincible. 

*note, out of 13 tracks 5 were short or interludes. only 7 were 'complete'