Mr Twin Sister: Upright and Even EP Album Review

Mr Twin Sister are a remedy for prudish pop not because they deliberately sing about sex, but because their muscular dance music is sexy. Sexy like a man wearing a satin button-up with only one of the buttons buttoned—like Picasso. Sexy like leaving red lipstick on the rim of a martini glass (and then realizing the lipstick has migrated to your chin). Mr Twin Sister’s latest Upright and Even EP—a slim four songs following a run of decadent albums—flourishes in this macho-but-not-sensual realm of cocktail-lounge house.

The group’s excellent self-titled 2014 album presented moments of hedonistic self-discovery as dapper, urbane grooves. Last year’s Al Mundo Azul was a pleasant if slightly less gratifying offering of late-night disco pop. Upright and Even exists in a similar universe of evenings where everything feels easy. You look great, you feel even better; you’re wearing a pair of slacks made out of a material that will surely catch fire if you’re not careful. Saxophone bleeds into strobing synth on the brief opener “Tommie,” a swirl of ’90s house and disco with flickers of trip-hop, as if the DJ is about to play Crystal Waters and chase it with some Gilberto Gil. On the unvarnished and slightly underproduced “Me Contuviste,” frontwoman Andrea Estella sings in Spanish over a meaty line of bass, sounding like she has a smirk tattooed on her face. 

The EP’s centerpiece is “Resort,” a propulsive seven and a half minutes that go by in an instant. It’s a song for people who go to the club to dance, not to waste time: “They’re gonna fade/I’m gonna be here all night!” Estella sings. Think of it like Simian Mobile Disco’s sleazy naughties jam “Hustler,” but for lotharios who love French touch. Instead of stealing records, Estella is trying to get another club patron to buy all her drinks on their Amex, a lyric so specific that you can almost see the card’s hologram sparkling beneath a disco ball. The instrumentation sharpens around Estella’s words. Synths dip far into the low end, a drum machine chirps, a saxophone materializes like a heavy exhale before speeding ahead, rushing deep into blacklit club floors and crowds of people clown car-ing their way into a bathroom stall.

Upright and Even exists to be danced to: As an EP, it’s more in step with West End maxi singles than the compendiums of leftover songs some bands might release between studio albums. Mr Twin Sister aren’t new to this strategy—they did something similar in 2018 on Power of Two / Echo Arms, which was more candy froth than robust dance music. Upright and Even is the more successful of the two. It demonstrates a real sense of economy: Nothing feels like a leftover. Each song is a morsel, fully realized. It’s self aware, mature—in a word, sexy.