Here's why...
Tackled one at a time:
Vampires With Dreaming Kids slides sideways into rooms like dead girls in horror films before singer Andrea Estella seductively purrs "If you're all alone / bring over your bones / and pay me / anyway you want to..."
As an opening track 'Dry Hump' is a wonderfully spellbinding introduction to a band that manage to keep you guessing. It melds into 'Ginger', a track which features the same raw female vocals but ups the Jesus and Mary Chain quota. The resulting soaring, fragile majesty sounds like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before they got confused about what that should mean.
'Nectarine' is more whimsical and folky with male vocals (presumably from guitarist Eric Cardona). Perhaps best of all, Vampires With Dreaming Kids closes on the soulful 'I Want A House'. It's refreshingly honest and a fittingly lo-fi end to a lo-fi EP.
But if Vampires With Dreaming Kids is pleasurably simple, Color Your Life is anything but. Opening on the seven-minute sprawl of 'The Other Side Of Your Face' it takes longer to get going, but the shimmering guitars that welcome in the 90th second prove this is considered evolution rather than revolution. There is an unmistakable 80s influence at work here.
As mentioned, whereas their first EP undeniably recalls the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Color Your Life feels more like Echo and the Bunnymen and Tears for Fears. As the opening track swells to its conclusion it really does take your breath away - this is the sound of a band who have stripped everything back to the essentials. Every note and sound feels undeniable vital.
'Lady Daydream' is similarly minimalistic, boasting a staggeringly simple yet catchy bassline. What separatesColor Your Life from the first EP is a warm and dreamlike quality to the music. It feels like drowning in honey.
In comparison to the first two tracks 'Milk And Honey' feels psychedelic and disorientating to the point where when the R&B influenced gentle strut of 'All Around And Away We Go' turns up it is a relief. Color Your Life's six tracks are rounded out by the atmospheric instrumental 'Galaxy Plateau' and the 80s groove of final track and ballad 'Phenomenons'. It's another gorgeous end to a thrilling set of song
Understated, beautiful and effortlessly cool, Twin Sister could have stuck these ten songs together and made one of 2010's best albums. That they didn't makes the prospect of their debut album all the more enticing.
BP x
Color Your Life was released today, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and Vinyl. Color Your Life and Vampires With Dreaming Kids are released as a double pack on 20 September, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on double CD. Both are released through Double Six [affiliate links].