Review: a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun — Aly & AJ

It’s 2021, and we have a new Aly & AJ album. Especially in these times of information overload and the need for ever-quickening turnaround, taking any significant amount of time away from the spotlight can kill an artist’s momentum instantly. Fourteen years since their last full-length, 2007’s Insomniatic, and two since their marvelous Sanctuary EP, the duo have graced the world with a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun, and it is every bit as summery as its Fiona Apple-biting title suggests, not to mention well worth the wait.

Taking influence from their native California and the music of the 1960s and ’70s alongside their previous ’80s calling card — think Laurel Canyon or recent Lana Del Rey records mixed with Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour — the album (namely opener “Pretty Places,” “Break Yourself,” “Lucky to Get Him,” and title track “Don’t Need Nothing”) revels in a mix of live and synthetic instrumentation that evokes a soundscape that reveres the past while embracing the present.

While pursing a sonic timelessness, a touch of the beat… lyrically speaks to its time quite vibrantly. On lead single “Slow Dancing,” the duo sing of “never [having] this much time on [their] hands” and “reasons to complain … tangled in red, white, and blue” — clear allusions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the crumbling state of American democracy. Tracks like “Symptom of Your Touch” and “Listen!!!” make reference to mental health struggles within the context of interpersonal relationships, while closer “Hold Out” asks its subject to be there to “catch [them]” should they need it. In the lead-up to release, Aly & AJ often cited that a touch of the beat… was the record they “were born to make,” and there’s little here to argue the contrary.

Rating: 8.5/10

Standout tracks: “Paradise,” “Lucky to Get Him,” “Listen!!!,” and “Hold Out”