Oh how we laughed when these two teenage former child actors emerged from Long Island in 2016. Their garish soft-rock 70s jackets and mullets made them look like characters from a rejected sitcom. And yet, their acclaimed debut, Do Hollywood, revealed the sartorially idiosyncratic hipsters to be marvellous songwriters.
Two years on, Michael and Brian D’Addario (now 19 and 21) have pushed the madcap envelope even further with this follow-up. Go to School is more theatrical and outlandish, as the pair delve into their Broadway roots for a concept-album-meets-rock-musical. The plot centres around Shane, a chimpanzee raised to think he’s human by his parents, who are “played” on the album by musical hero Todd Rundgren and their mother, Susan Hall, who sings on the debut. Rundgren’s Something/Anything? is still a primary influence, and the strings orchestrations on the goofy The Student Becomes the Teacher could have been purchased from the Beatles, but the increased frantic energy and baroque mania now recalls early Sparks.
In some ways Go to School is an authentically, lovingly reproduced if rather pastiche period piece, but it’s hard not to admire the ambition and showmanship, or the breadth of influences – from glam to music hall to Stephen Sondheim to Oklahoma! The songs are mini-dramas, using school bullying and violence to create an oblique parable for frustrated, divided times. Lonely is a big ballad about rejection and identity. Country glam centrepiece The Fire sees the shunned/vengeful chimp set the school ablaze, unintentionally claiming 100 lives. It’s weirdly moving. “I saw Shane, and everyone was pushing him / And you could really feel his pain.” The Bully is a slightly teeth-rattling bossa nova, but Born Wrong/Heart Song and If You Give Me Enough are lovely, recalling the innocent, melancholy beauty of the Beach Boys of In My Room or, ironically, Be True to Your School.
More such marvels wouldn’t have gone amiss: the 15 songs feel overloaded with glam-ragtime-Vaudeville rockers. Still, it’s hard not to cheer when This Is My Tree sees the long-suffering antihero returned to his natural habitat.
