Reviews
I have two observations for you. Let’s face it, most people who visit the Louvre museum in Paris have only one thing in mind. They want to see that picture of the world’s first semi-smiling Emo. I’m not talking here about art/art history students but about Mr Joe Public wanting to tick off his Bucket list that he has seen the Mona Lisa smile.
Likewise, huge numbers of tourists come to Liverpool solely because the Beatles lured them here. They want to see where the four mop-tops grew up and the places they hung out, and most importantly where they played those iconic songs. Every day hundreds of pilgrims walk up and down Matthew Street and go into the Cavern, roughly at the spot where that exciting Some Other Guy video was shot by Granada TV all those years ago.
So what do you get if you morph my two observations into one? The MonaLisa Twins of course. Resident Cavern Club band. Rock chicks with melody and rock sass. Every Saturday night people queue to get in the Cavern and see these enigmatic Austrian twins, who smile more engagingly than the famous painting, after which they are named, and play the Beatles and 60’s covers that the fans crave.
Mona and Lisa take some of the most beautifully haunting melodies of the 60’s and make them sound even more incredible. Their versions of God Only Knows, California Dreaming and San Francisco make me feel as if I’m walking down Haight Ashbury in the height of hazy summer, somewhere between 1965 and…2016 (because they are thoroughly twenty-first century too.)
That’s Life, their own single from last year, has a well-crafted, quirky video where the girls sit with a dog in front of the TV set, watching old black and white movies and ruminating about the course of life, until the TV explodes into flame at the end. The song itself has Beatles DNA running right through it, from the chord structures, to the harmonies, to the lead guitar, but why not?
There are so many songs to watch on their Youtube channel that it would be impossible to review them all here, from covers to their own songs. Likewise the biography on their website does a far better job of describing their career than I could. After reading this review head straight to https://www.monalisa-twins.com/ to continue your voyage of discovery.
Supported very ably by James on bass and Charlie on drums, the MonaLisa Twins have a great 60’s rock sound that is perfectly suited to the Cavern. It has one and a half feet firmly in the past and half a foot striding out into the future. Starting with Drive My Car and ending with a pulsating version of Revolution, they perform two sets, nearly thirty songs in total, ranging from Beatles standards, well known singles such as Can’t Buy Me Love, She Loves You and I Feel Fine, to B sides such as She’s a Woman and This Boy. Their set is like a series of photos plucked from a 1960’s musical memories box: the Stones are there, The Who, The Doors, the Hollies. Throw in a snapshot of Nancy Sinatra, a sepia of the Easybeats (complete with a dedication to any Aussies in the audience) and bring it all in to the twenty first century with a couple of self-compositions. There you have it: an hour and a half of foot stomping, head shaking rock n’roll that will leave you feeling that the world is a better place. My Generation and Revolution, the two set closers, remind you that these are two idealistic, young ladies, full of early twenties vitality, who know how to live life optimistically and to the full.
I cannot recommend highly enough that you get down to the Cavern some time soon to see them, Beatles fan or not. It’s far better than going to the Louvre to see the original Mona Lisa. You get two for the price of one, better smiles, and that Emo chick stuck on a wall in Paris can’t sing harmonies or play rock n roll like these two.
P.S. I was fortunate to catch up with the MonaLisa Twins on Saturday, 30th April, 2016, between their two regular Cavern sets. We headed through the audience that had just soaked up their first batch of songs, up the iconic spiral stairs and out into the light, commenting that you expected it to be dark after being in The Cavern. We headed off to a local Mexican fast food joint, where I asked them a few questions.
Be patient! That interview will follow soon….
And the wait is now over! The full interview transcript can be read here: http://www.cre8ivation.com/?p=5623
©Cre8ivation
