Continuing on his latest North American tour, the Brooklyn musician, George Lewis Jr., better known as the synth-pop artist Twin Shadow, stopped in San Francisco this week for two sold-out shows at the American Music Hall.
Lewis is touring with keyboardist Wynne Bennett and a couple of touring band members. Lewis and Bennett collaborated on the recently released sophomore Twin Shadow album, Confess, which Lewis self-produced.
“Five Seconds” – Twin Shadow from Confess*
* MP3 version of Confess is on a special, limited time sale via Amazon for only $5.99. The CD edition is $8.99 and the special vinyl edition is $17.98
Among the biggest crowd pleasers Thursday night were some of Twin Shadow’s newest songs on Confess, like “Golden Light,” “When The Movie’s Over,” and “I Don’t Care,” all of which have a decidedly more pop-driven groove than the songs on his acclaimed 2010 debut, Forget.
Photos by Ryan Holmes
A native of the Dominican Republic by way of Florida, Lewis moved to Boston in 2000 and formed the band, Mad Man Films, with drummer Joseph Ciampini, now of Hooray for Earth. Not satisfied with recording music for theatre and films, Lewis moved to Brooklyn and started the Twin Shadow project.
From San Francisco, Twin Shadow and his touring band, head down to southern California, then throughout the desert west, the central U.S., the south, the northeast, and then all the way back to San Francisco for yet another show at the American Music Hall on October 16th, before taking a two-week break. Twin Shadow will resume its 2012 tour with a sold-out Halloween concert in Manchester, England on Oct 31st. From there, Twin Shadow will tour western Europe for two weeks before wrapping up a 36-city, nearly four-month long tour.
Some people may wonder why a popular, rising artist, who has played many music festivals, including Coachella (2011), Lollapalooza (2012), and Bonnaroo (2011), was not booked for America’s newest big music festival, Outside Lands, which just celebrated its 5th anniversary last week in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It could be any number of reasons, but Bay Area fans still got to see Twin Shadow in a smaller venue than the Polo Fields, the former which offers more intimacy, and often, better sound quality.
Photographs of Thursday night’s show (Aug. 16th) by San Francisco photographer Ryan Holmes. His personal website is Sixteenth & Broadway.
