In my Best Of 2018: Rock, Folk, Etc., I included an album called Pink Sky, noting: “Sometimes it’s the side project that connects, as with this new band from Shehzaad Jiwani of Greys, who are usually described as a “noise-punk” band. With Golden Drag, Jiwani has unleashed both his gift for melody and his love for 70’s art-rock (think Eno’s first two albums) for nine punchy, colorful tracks that will have you seeing him in a whole new light.”
As much as I enjoyed that album, I missed the EP from 2022 and so I was especially delighted when Twin Paradise landed in my Release Radar this morning without even a single or two to warm me up. This sonically adventurous opus is accompanied by some manifesto-like writing on Jiwani’s Instagram, including an acknowledgment of influences like Sandinista, the White Album, and Drukqs, admitting to being “compelled by these post-masterwork works, albums whose unwieldiness and inconsistency is part of the appeal.”
He also acknowledges sci-fi author William Gibson and filmmaker Adam Curtis, along with the fulcrum point of 9/11, which definitively ended the 90s, culturally speaking, and ushered in a more conservative moment. On Twin Paradise, this all assembles into a commanding art-rock statement, with noise, melody, and pulsating rhythms deployed with variety and style. All that is heard in Think Blue Count Two, for which Jiwani and Dan Heywood have crafted a mini-epic of paranoia. Watch it below - and then catch the whole album.
With the dates “2010-2019” appearing on Greys’ Bandcamp page, it would seem Golden Drag is Jiwani’s main project now. Either way, I will be the last to complain about more albums as good as Twin Paradise!
From the archives:
Best Of 2018: Rock, Folk, Etc.