Twinemen - s/t (2002) Dana Colley, Billy Conway, and Laurie Sargent. 1. Spinner 2. Little By Little 3. Golden Hour 4. Harper And the Midget 5. Chose Sauvage 6. Watch You Fall 7. Signs Of Life 8. Learn To Fly 9. Ronnie Johnson 10. Who's Gonna Sing Twinemen are Dana Colley, Billy Conway, and Laurie Sargent. Twinemen are a new band that combine improvisation and organic soul chemistry with a deep respect for the song to create music that is difficult to describe, and yet resonates with a warm sense of familiarity. The manifesto was to continue to create unusual music, and Dana and Billy have a credible history of just that from their years with the band Morphine. Twinemen were brought together after the death of their friend and bandmate, Mark Sandman, leaving Dana and Billy without the band they had been a part of for ten years, with five records, (Rykodisc, Dreamworks)a Grammy nominated video and relentless worldwide touring. This is their first original project since Morphine. In the year after Mark's death they put together Orchestra Morphine, a nine piece rollicking celebration of the work of Morphine, and toured the US and Italy. One of the members of Orchestra Morphine was singer Laurie Sargent, and with her the seeds were sown for the music that would become Twinemen. Dana, Billy and Laurie spent the summer of 2001 working in their Cambridge, Ma. studio, Hi-N-Dry, the studio in which Morphine created and recorded. Comfortable with their surroundings and their musical past, they began developing ideas that grew into songs, and these songs grew into Twinemen. With the help of Russ Gershon and Evan Harriman (Orchestra Morphine), and Andrew Mazzone and Stuart Kimball (Laurie Sargent, Family Jewels), they created a collection of darkly hopeful songs that reflect both a past and the possibilities of the future. "The beacon for creating these songs was to make music that couldn't be easily categorized," Conway points out. "I like the open endedness of this group. We left the door open for any direction we wanted to take." For Colley, that includes turns at bass, guitar, piano, and other instruments. For Conway, that means replacing the drummer's usual urge to be rhythmic with the idea of being simply musical - a tack that's already a hallmark of his formidable style. "It's probably the most unstructured music I've ever played,"says Sargent. And yet it seems as solid as the brick walls that enclose Hi-N-Dry. The Boston Globe >>> The Twine Men at the Lizard Lounge: by Steve Morse The Twine Men feature the nucleus of Orchestra Morphine (including singer Laurie Sarget, drummer Billy Conway, and saxaphonist Dana Colley) and are named after a cartoon character conceived by Morphine founder Mark Sandman. There's nothing cartoonish about the sound, however. This is a unltrasophisticated band that knows no boundaries. Although known for baritone sax on a hypnotic, Dead type number, while Sargent showed new versitality by offering a brilliant spoken word rap and adding a song in French. The music also rocked with an urgent dynacism at times. An enthralling new band. Who's Gonna Sing, March 24, 2003 Reviewer: Feng Zeng from Chicago, IL United States I am sure most people pay attention to this album because they are Morphine fans. But the irony is that you are gonna like this album if you are not expecting another Morphine album. The drum beats and sax are as sedating as ever before. Yet, through out the entire album, you feel like there is something missing. You cannot hear the familiar sliding bass and that beautiful voice. No one in the world rocks like Mark Sandman does. With that being said, folks, this one is as close to the old Morphine as you can get. Although I don't really care too much about the singer (she is good but not as original), the rest of the stuff is still brilliant. The last song was definitely wrote for Mark. "What if I wake up, and the music stops playing ..... Wish somebody were singing ..... Who's gonna sing? We're all gonna sing ....." Surely, someone will be missed forever, but we all have to move on.
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