Review Summary: Happy Halloween
First things first: Galactic Twin is a one man project of English musician James Carling, and
Juvenilia is the debut album under the moniker. While the artwork might suggest stoner rock/metal, given it has the zany feel associated with those genres, in reality
Juvenilia leans more into an airier form of psychedelic rock/pop, built upon lush soundscapes, glistening synths, rollicking guitar work, and prominent beats. In short, the most apt descriptor here is probably “neo-psych”, even if that’s a term which I’ve generally found to obscure more than it illuminates.
Galactic Twin’s biggest achievement here has already been hinted at by the words I used in the last paragraph: “lush”, “glistening”, etc. Indeed, the project already has a lovely sound picked out - rich and often grand, while also feeling like the rare act describable as “floaty” despite not dipping much (if at all) into dream pop influences. When the hooks sink in, the results are impressive - three recommended tracks for the full experience would be the early highlight “The Act”, mid-album standout “Dweller”, and the tasteful closer “Forever Eternal”.
On the other hand, my biggest critique of this first effort is that said hooks aren’t always quite up to snuff. At worst, like in “All You Ever Wanted”, the chorus becomes slightly abrasive in its repetition, rather than turning into an earworm. More commonly, though, this is a relatively minor complaint, not impeding the songs from being quite good, but simply keeping them from truly soaring.
Now, this review wouldn’t be complete without me waxing poetic about this album’s biggest sleeper hit, the penultimate track “What Was The Question”. It’s far from the most immediate tune here, but repeat listens have allowed me to appreciate it more and more. As the most expansive song on the record (nearly seven minutes in duration), it’s almost proggy in construction, allowing a number of different segments to utilize stylistic and dynamic contrasts while flowing seamlessly into one another. This kind of elaborate arrangement really works with Galactic Twin’s existing sound, and I’d love to see more exploration of this direction in the future of the project.
The bottom line is that
Juvenilia is a flawed and uneven record, but remains an unusually accomplished release for a debut. Even on a more fundamental level, I can appreciate the construction of the tracklist - starting with a fifty-five second intro track might seem questionable, but the theatrical vibe of “Myopic” is quite successful setting the tone, and the closing duo are among the album’s best and leave the listener on a satisfying note. One album down, Galactic Twin has already found a wonderful sound and created a number of excellent songs (and even more good-to-great ones). Fine-tuning the style and creating a more consistently incredible set of tunes will be the next step
