The Lemon Twigs
Go To School
4AD
This is a great album with a great anti-bullying message. It's as theatrical as Tommy, with a vastly different plot, in which a childless couple take in Shane, a chimp, and raise him as a human boy. Shane goes to school, and like all misfits, gets bullied, found, fucked, and forgotten by the queen of the school. He snaps and commits an act of violence, setting his school on fire. A hundred people die. He goes on the run, into the woods, getting away clean by blending in with the other primates.
Brian and Michael D’Addario, who are the Lemon Twigs, clearly side with Shane, and you will too, even if you’ll recoil from the violence, knowing enough never to be that way.
If you’re a bullied kid, get help any way you can. Don’t be like Shane, or your life is over, and maybe the lives of others. Just be yourself, as clichédas that is, and be true to you, and you will come out on top eventually.
The music is why I compare this album to Tommy. It's a mix of Broadway show tunes, 70s AOR, and Big Star. Todd Rundgren sat in for an authentic 70s sound, with Jody Stephens of Big Star on drums for one track. It belongs on the stage or even TV or film just as much as any classic musical or Glee. Tommy is psych-rock that eventually wound up as a film and musical, and achieved it’s full effect there, as the plot was incoherent in spots on the album. This is true of Go To School, as well.
Does Shane’s mom cheat on his dad, and does his dad cheat on his family with Daisy, Shane’s once and future girlfriend? A song or two showing how badly Shane is bullied would have helped clarify things, too.
But all in all this is, as I say, a great album, and one that should not be missed. It really is for real.
Andrea Weiss