Twin Peaks @ Turner Hall [MKE] - 9/19/19
Twin Peaks’ Clay Frankel taking the lead at Turner Hall in Milwaukee, WI (Photo ©2019 Kevin Hill)
For their new album Lookout Low, Chicago DIY heroes enlisted a producer - Ethan Johns (Kings Of Leon, White Denim, Ryan Adams) no less, for the first time in the career. The results are a shaggy, but not ragged, take on the garage rock this five-piece has spent the past nine years perfecting, that owes as much to 70's-era Rolling Stones as it does to Them or 13th Floor Elevators. If these songs are a more polished version of Twin Peaks than we've heard before, there's an undeniable energy crackling just under the surface of them. At Turner Hall in Milwaukee last week, that energy burst from the stage like lightning from a bottle onto a crowd who were there to give it right back in equal measure.
While the newer songs - "Casey's Groove," title track "Lookout Low," and a jubilant show-ending tear through of their latest single "Oh Mama" - were all well received, it was the older songs that lit the audience's fuse. For most of the set, a minimum of TWO mosh pits churned at the front of the stage. And those not busy thrashing into their neighbors could be seen with fists raised, splashing beer and sweat around, shouting every word back to the stage with an abandon that you just don't see too often in these days of commodified and Spotified "rock 'n' roll."
As a band, Twin Peaks has developed the slither of revered bands like Faces and the sweat of more modern rockers like Atlanta’s Black Lips, but there's a spark that's lit when the front-man acumen of Clay Frankel and straight shredder excursions of guitarist/singer Cadien Lake James that sends the whole room up in DIY house show flames. It elevates a Twin Peaks performance from just a night seeing some vibrant and vital rock 'n' roll to a show that could "change your life." And judging by the mess of beer and sweat left on the floor after their Milwaukee show, you can be sure for at least a few people in attendance, it did.
