TVVINS Peaks: Hot Press Interview with TVVINS

Clearly burnt by his band’s moniker being a search engine nightmare waiting to happen – no, we don’t want to know what happened to the guy who played Norm – and not quite ready for the meta-laughs of ‘The Cast Of Frasier’, when the time came, Conor Adams decided to flick two ‘V’s into his new project’s name. TVVINS it is then. A duo, comprising the aforementioned Cast Of Cheers front fella and Adebisi Shank/No Spill Blood whizz Lar Kaye, that like to get a little spacey.

It’s pronounced ‘twins’, by the way, but we’ve heard tell the lettering alteration is a result of a Japanese band having called dibs on that name.
“I don’t know if they’re a band, but they are two sisters that are actually twins,” Kaye points out, enigmatically.
“Bonafide twins!” Adams chimes in. “So we can’t really steal that from them. And we’re clearly not twins.”
Nothing to do, then, with that late ‘80s comedy classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito?
“Definitely a factor. It was on over Christmas and I was taking pictures of the screen every 10 minutes and sending them to Lar!”

The pair have been running in the same music circles since they were 15 – “so… two years ago?” quips Conor – but it wasn’t until last summer, when Adams returned from London and they found themselves in a limbo period between writing the third albums from The Cast Of Cheers and Adebisi Shank and having them ready for release, that they finally started making sweet music together.

“The summer of love,” Adams remembers fondly. Starting with what Kaye calls “no mad expectations”, their initial forays sounded like the halfway point between their twin outputs to date. “It was just an explosion of guitars,” explains Adams. “Really exciting but after a day or two, we listened back to everything we had and it felt a bit pointless. Why bother doing this, if we already do it in our own bands?”

Alas, the world is unlikely to ever hear those sessions. “I don’t even know if I have them anymore,” admits Kaye. “Do you not?” asks Adams. “If you don’t, I don’t! Bury them in the desert and make a treasure map.”

More readily accessible booty can be heard in the form of debut track ‘Two Worlds’ and new single ‘You Better’. The latter, a cool, immediate synth number was the first thing TVVINS recorded once they’d found their new electronic direction. The bass gave them a foundation. A vocoder, lying in Lar’s room with “a layer of dust on it”, proved inspirational.

“’You Better’ just popped out in five minutes. It was so far from anything we had ever done.” Kaye nods. “It was one of those moment where we looked at each other and said, ‘okay, we’re onto something’.” The fun they we’re having comes through on the recording.

“You should hear the stuff that’s not out there!” laughs Adams. “The outtakes on the vocoder are amazing. They sound like Cher. ‘Do you beliiiieve in life after love?’!”

As for the rest of the live set they’ve now debuted in both Dublin and London – opting to go the full band route rather than tapping away on a tablet – Adams says that “weirdly enough, ‘You Better’ may not be the best example. It’s a lot more rocking, kinda heavy.”

Other shared influences infiltrating the sound include Devo and the soundtracks to The Life Aquatic and SNES classic Donkey Kong Country.

Please tell us TVVINS are here to stay. “People say ‘side project’, but once you’re in a band, you’re in a band,” confirms Adams. “We’re very focused on TVVINS. We’re very much ‘all guns blazing’ on this one.”

TVVINS play Whelan's, Dublin on February 27