The Lemon Twigs

Two brothers from Hicksville

The Lemon Twigs are Brian and Michael D'Addario, brothers from Hicksville on Long Island who started the band in 2014 while still pupils at Hicksville High School. Both had been working performers since childhood. Brian appeared on Broadway in Les Misérables and The Little Mermaid, Michael in The Coast of Utopia and on television. Their father, Ronnie D'Addario, is a musician, and the brothers grew up playing everything within reach: both handle guitar, bass, keyboards and drums, and Brian adds trumpet and cello.

The break came through a direct message. In 2014 the brothers sent demos over Twitter to Jonathan Rado of Foxygen, who agreed to produce their first proper album. Speaking to Running Man Press in May 2026, Brian remembered that Foxygen "didn't take a real slacker kind of approach" and "were ambitious with their projects", while Michael credited them with turning the pair on to analogue recording. After a limited 2015 release, What We Know, on Winspear, the Rado-produced Do Hollywood arrived on the British independent label 4AD in 2016.

Six albums in ten years

The 4AD years produced two more records. Go to School, released on 24 August 2018, entered the UK Albums Chart at number 93 on 6 September that year, and Songs for the General Public followed on 21 August 2020. The band then moved to the Brooklyn label Captured Tracks, which has released everything since: Everything Harmony on 5 May 2023, A Dream Is All We Know on 3 May 2024, and now Look for Your Mind!.

The line-up settled in 2023. Danny Ayala, who played keyboards in the band's first incarnation between 2014 and 2017, returned on keyboards, bass and vocals, and Reza Matin joined on drums. Both now sing, and both are central to the harmony stack that defines the live show.

The brothers kept busy between albums. Brian released a solo single, "Till the Morning", on 19 February 2025 ahead of a solo album on 20 March. In October 2025 the band covered their father's song "Not Today", and the brothers produced his album Written by Ronnie D'Addario, released on 28 November 2025. On 25 November they put out two songs and a Christmas single with the New York band Tchotchke. The new material was already being road-tested that autumn: at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on 24 October 2025, on a bill shared with Parcels, a twelve-song set included "Look for Your Mind", "Ghost Run Free", "Corner of My Eye" and "Bring You Down" months before any of them were released.

Look for Your Mind!

The sixth album was announced on 11 March 2026 alongside its lead single, "I Just Can't Get Over Losing You". A second single, "2 or 3", followed on 8 April, and the record came out on 8 May via Captured Tracks. It runs to fourteen tracks in 41 minutes, was recorded at the brothers' Brooklyn studio, The Vegetable Attic, and was produced by the band themselves.

What sets it apart from the previous five is who plays on it. Where earlier records were largely the brothers overdubbing each other, this one brings in Matin on drums, Ayala on bass and backing vocals, and Eva Chambers of Tchotchke on bass and backing vocals, who also painted the cover. Michael told Minnesota Public Radio's The Current on 27 April 2026 that the aim was "capturing the live energy a little bit on records", and told Running Man Press in May that they had "never really gotten this kind of natural sounding on a recording". Strings were played by professionals rather than layered by the brothers, to keep the sessions simple.

The reference points remain unashamedly pre-1970. Michael named New Colony Six and Gerry and the Pacemakers as touchstones for the lead single, calling the approach "syrupy" Beatles-derived pop. For "2 or 3", Brian stacked instruments to evoke the Wrecking Crew session players and added strings and flutes; he told Rock Cellar that the chorus came to him in a dream the morning after the band's first show in Buenos Aires in 2025. "Every time we try to write something that's completely straightforward," he said, "we can't help adding an element which comes out of left field." Consequence, reporting the announcement, described "an undercurrent of paranoia and suspicion" running beneath the melodies.

Reviews were strong. The album holds a Metacritic score of 84. AllMusic gave it four stars and heard "new immediacy and the feel of a band rocking out together"; Classic Rock, Mojo and Record Collector also awarded four stars, and Clash called it "one of the group's strongest works to date". MusicOMH was cooler at three and a half, finding the record inconsistent. Commercially it reached number 27 on the UK Albums Sales chart and number 12 on the UK Independent chart, number 6 on Japan's rock albums chart and number 10 on the French rock and metal chart.

Where they stand in September 2026

The band has been on the road almost continuously since the album campaign began. The tour opened at Théâtre Beanfield in Montreal on 24 April 2026 and worked through North American clubs, including Metro in Chicago on 2 May and the 9:30 Club in Washington on 9 May. The UK and Ireland leg ran from Nottingham's Rescue Rooms on 18 May to Manchester Academy 2 on 30 May, taking in the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire in London on 20 May, two nights at Leeds' Brudenell Social Club on 22 and 23 May, Vicar Street in Dublin and the Queen Margaret Union in Glasgow. A West Coast run from Seattle to San Diego between 11 and 20 June included The Fillmore in San Francisco on 17 June, and the band played Fuji Rock in Niigata, Japan, on 26 July.

August brought a short East Coast run, with City Winery in New York on 11 August, Asbury Lanes on 13 August and Hartwood Acres Amphitheater near Pittsburgh on 16 August. The most recent appearance logged is a seven-song session at WFMU's studios in New York on 29 August, five of them from the new album, including "Fire and Gold", "Nothin' but You" and "Your True Enemy".

The next stretch is the longest. A 28-date continental European tour runs from Parkteatret in Oslo on 17 September to Teatro Eslava in Madrid on 26 October, passing through VEGA in Copenhagen on 21 September, Melkweg in Amsterdam on 24 September, Hole 44 in Berlin on 28 September and La Cigale in Paris on 11 October, plus festival slots at Fiestas del Pilar in Zaragoza and the Caravaca Power Pop Fest in Spain. A home-town show at the Knockdown Center in New York follows on 30 October, and a southern United States run from Richmond on 4 December to Houston on 19 December includes Third Man Records' Blue Room in Nashville on 7 December.

The show: four players, every instrument

The current live band is a four-piece: the two brothers with Ayala and Matin, all four singing. Reviewing the first Leeds night on 22 May 2026 for Backseat Mafia, Jim F timed the set at around ninety minutes and noted that the players "switch fluidly between instruments while effortlessly maintaining their rich three- and four-part harmonies". Brian and Michael trade lead vocals, guitar and drums across the night rather than holding fixed positions.

The setlist draws on the whole catalogue rather than leaning on the new record. Leeds got "My Golden Years", "Any Time of Day", "Ghost Run Free", "In the Eyes of the Girl", "Rock On (Over and Over)", "Fire and Gold", "Joy", "Corner of My Eye", "Foolin' Around" and "How Can I Love Her More?". Covers turn up too: the Forest Hills set in October 2025 closed with Love's "No Matter What You Do". The Leeds reviewer placed the sound "somewhere between mid-period The Beatles, classic The Beach Boys and a distinctly New York attitude, with just a touch of psych here and a dash of AOR there", reported both Brudenell nights sold out, and concluded that the band "need to be enjoyed, supported, witnessed and loved".

Support varies by territory. In the UK the opener was The Stones, a New York glam-rock band the Leeds review compared to Lou Reed and David Bowie; in Minneapolis on 1 May the bill was shared with Josephine Network. Brian told Running Man Press that in bigger rooms "people react in real time", though the response differs unpredictably from city to city, and Michael has said the band tries not to let live considerations shape the writing, adding: "We try not to think about it if it hurts the record, but sometimes it can help."