Score: 7.7/10
Release Date: July 20, 2010
Label: Gnomonsong
Band Website

It’s the big high school party. To your left, Andie Walsh; to your right, Donnie Darko. Feelings of regret begin to overtake though this party is a last ditch effort to whitewash those emotions. Covering them with a semi-gloss finish and a drunken smile is a surefire cure for The Cure. One heartbreak after another, it never seems to get better. This is the scenario played out in emo films since the mid-80s. Demur attitudes and a sense of worldly weight on people who experience what everyone else experiences, yet these characters are connected to our receptors.

This malignant hangnail of depression proves the motif behind Lower Dens’ debut, Twin Hand Movement. Fronted by perpetual heartbreaker Jana Hunter, Lower Dens channel the moments when we can’t bear to face anything but our canvas soles. A burden growing within us that swallows happiness and extinguishes light. The dark recesses of our minds at work, looking for the perfect opportunity for self-sabotage. It’s eating away at you right now and unless you confront it, you’re doomed to be nothing but a Hollywood teenage martyr.

Twin Hand Movement may play the role of shoulder shrugging soundtrack but in reality, it’s a deeply rich and elegantly catchy album. Mixing motifs and metaphors without a second thought, Lower Dens tap into the soul sucking doubt within us all, yet never exploiting it beyond the cause to enjoy a good drag from a French-rolled cigarette. Rather, Twin Hand Movement is sexy in its bitter awkwardness. There is no need to be noticed by the popular brood or our secret crush. This isn’t the blow-off to send theater patrons out the door happily ever after; it’s the reality of the situation.

Intimacy chains together Twin Hand Movement as it taps into the foggy pall of 1980s Liverpool. Methodical guitar runs and sultry vocals dot the Lower Dens landscape, drawing us out of our ebon shell and into some semblance of pleasure. “Plastic and Powder” and “Rosie” uses strings to mimic fingers running through hair or seductive caressing. The two tracks bleed into each other, and when “Rosie” begins to unravel into a mid-tempo dance, it’s with the anxiety of anticipation. Lips so close to kissing they quiver; hands so close to undressing they shake. “Truss Me” provides the post-coital serenade, eschewing bliss for heart wrenching romance. Dare not ask for it any other way.

This is a scene played out many times throughout Twin Hand Movement. Songs are wisely lumped together to play out cinematic fantasies weighted equally in reality. Lower Dens may be selling musical daydreams but they astutely mirror wishful thinking with the methods of modern love. Twin Hand Movement ends with us wanting–nay, needing—more. Lower Dens deliver true desire and in the process, transform clichéd acts of wanton lusting into real emotion.