Twin Sister remain a wild card on In Heaven, the band's full-length debut. The group took a while to release its first album, instead issuing a pair of EPs that flitted from style to style with playful abandon. That they waited three years to release In Heaven might suggest that the bandmembers were preparing something more cohesive, but things haven't changed much; though Andrea Estella, Eric Cardona, and company have tightened up their song structures and sharpened their hooks a bit, they're still as eclectic as ever. ...
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Twin Sister remain a wild card on In Heaven, the band's full-length debut. The group took a while to release its first album, instead issuing a pair of EPs that flitted from style to style with playful abandon. That they waited three years to release In Heaven might suggest that the bandmembers were preparing something more cohesive, but things haven't changed much; though Andrea Estella, Eric Cardona, and company have tightened up their song structures and sharpened their hooks a bit, they're still as eclectic as ever. They seem determined to not repeat the same approach twice, and only slight hints of the dream pop that shaded Vampires with Dreaming Kids and Color Your Life tinge "Kimmi in a Rice Field" and "Luna's Theme." Instead, Twin Sister opt for a streamlined, polished sound that allows them to dabble in smooth synth pop on "Daniel" and "Space Babe" and head-bobbing rock on "Saturday Sunday" and "Eastern Green." However, In Heaven's best songs delve into older territory. "Spain" has all the drama of a Bond movie theme -- or more recently, songs by Broadcast or Pram -- while the wonderfully strange "Gene Ciampi" sounds like it's straight out of a long-lost Italian film from the '60s. "Bad Street," meanwhile, is a surprisingly credible take on '70s disco-pop, underscoring that the only constants in Twin Sister's sound are Cardona and Estella's voices (which get a great showcase on the similarly '70s-feeling duet "Stop"). With In Heaven and their EPs, they have done everything from shoegaze to disco to folk well, but they haven't presented something that would make all this genre-hopping sound immediately recognizable as Twin Sister. As with their other work, In Heaven is intriguing but not completely satisfying, but that intrigue is tantalizing enough to keep listeners guessing. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi
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