{"product_id":"twisted-teens_the-holy-cross-tigers","title":"The Holy Cross Tigers","description":"\u003cp\u003eEverything you are about to learn about Twisted Teens—and, specifically, their third magnetic and perfectly ragged album of 2026, a saga of heartbreak and hidden triumph called Holy Cross Tigers that also marks their Sub Pop debut—is the truth. Or at least that’s what Caspian and RJ “The Razor” Santos, who have somehow already collected several nicknames each in the two-year lifespan of this band, say right now. They also admit it could all be a lie, a myth they could be making up because it seems more fun than marketing themselves like trinkets in a discount store. Looks like you’ll have to decide for yourself, just like Caspian and RJ did when they decided Twisted Teens could be their band, their crew, their life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwisted Teens didn’t really exist before it made its debut, an initially obscure classic that will almost certainly come to be called The Orange Album. The pair were, instead, neighbors in New Orleans’ Holy Cross neighborhood, where their confederation of complicated misfits pays little attention to the magnolia-loving, beignet-popping tourist board version of their city because it means they get to make art under the radar, off the books, in their own way. RJ was playing steel in a half-dozen country and Cajun bands, maybe doing four gigs a night and practicing or painting when he wasn’t on one of those; he was and is itinerant, hopping trains and these days planes to paint signs near the Arctic Circle when someone has work. Caspian, meanwhile, had played in wild-child anarcho acts on the folk fringes, forgoing electricity and technology for much of his 20s to live in an illegal shack on a state park.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you were already living on said fringes, the pandemic could be a boon, government subsidies showing up from an administration that took pleasure in taking a machete to the social safety net. Through a confluence of circumstances, Caspian suddenly had money, so he bought a little recording setup—a podcast mic, a condenser mic, a computer, a real top-of-the-line rig—and started making records in his Holy Cross spot. One day, he was fooling with a song he would eventually call “Rando” when the sound hit like an epiphany. The drums and drum machine and the guitar felt like fantastic shit, a small but mighty, bright but sad sound that made you want to stick your head against the speaker, to leave it there. It was to him like Lee Perry unlocking dub, the dudes in the Helvete basement fumbling into black metal, the Ramones figuring out you could make rock by blowing out and speeding up songs they might have heard at sockhops. Caspian rushed next door and told RJ to come over, to riff on whatever this was he had discovered. Mardi Gras 2024 had just ended, and The Orange Album—we’re calling it that now—was out in April.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaybe they’re sorry for the absence in 2025, the way that first one might have seemed like the last one. Consider 2026 an apology. In February, they released Blame the Clown, or maybe The Green Album, a record that met instant accolades, with Pitchfork and Paste essentially cosigning it with the caps-lock on. Much the same happened five months later, when Twisted Teens surprise-released Florida Water Blues (OK, The Blue Album), an absurdist take on their various wanderings around the world, from the icy havens up north to the fetid swamps far below. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhy did people suddenly latch onto Twisted Teens, two guys who had been so far outside of the punk and indie rock industries for so long they come now with very strong opinions about said things? Well, there was that sound, sticky and warm, even when they were bunching up the blues inside of it, the way that Caspian’s life-pocked voice slipped against RJ’s surrealist steel shapes like lotion against an old scab. What’s more, though these songs sounded simple in the same way that early rock ’n’ roll or real American folk music did, they offered relatable stories in a language all their own, much like early rock ’n’ roll or real American folk music did. Elizabeth Cotten was a poet, Chuck Berry and Professor Longhair, too. Caspian’s songs were more real than precious, in the way of those predecessors. Sound met song without meeting much bullshit along the way, apart from the stories Caspian and RJ sometimes chose to share about themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo this brings us, at long last, to the main event, to Twisted Teens’ moment of selling out to the big, bad indie rock machine, to their Sub Pop debut, Holy Cross Tigers, or The Burgundy Album. Sorry to disappoint the skeptics, but these 13 songs were written and recorded in much the same way as their predecessors. RJ lives behind Caspian’s house now, but Caspian is the early riser. He’ll get out of bed, play the guitar until he finds a riff that feels good, put down a drum machine line, and play guitar and bass over it until the tune starts to lock into place. When RJ has finally found his first cup of coffee, and if he’s not off near the Arctic, he sits down and responds with his steel. The condenser mic goes above the kit, the podcast mic in the kick—real big-money stuff these days, going down in Holy Cross.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut something was different this time for Twisted Teens. The week RJ and Caspian made their first album was the very same week Caspian started dating someone he really liked. If you bounce around the world long enough, you’ll be in and out of a lot of relationships, but this one felt unique. They broke up last summer in a little beach town in Albania, then came back to New Orleans, still living together while she finished a school program. It was hell for Caspian. He wallowed, drinking too much and breaking his foot before he had another epiphany: “If I go make a record right now, this fucking lame breakup will pay for the rest of your life.” So he started writing and recording, RJ eventually spending three days talking back to the songs with his steel. It was like Blood on the Tracks, had it been made in a Motel 6.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe whole saga is within these songs. It starts with “Stalks,” the opener that toggles between flirty and frustrated, as if Caspian is trying to make it all last just a little longer while knowing he will fail. Devilish and moaning, RJ’s steel walks the same twisting line. Caspian howls out happier memories and current moans during “When We First Met,” a shout-out-loud joiner about the way couples go everywhere and come together in the blissful and lusty early days, a high water mark that they’ll never sustain. It’s a song about being drunk and sad and lonely because you remember the past, RJ weeping there alongside him through the steel—you have felt this way, too, right? \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Be an Angel” is Twisted Teens’ way of saying don’t think twice, because it’s all right, a bleary-eyed dismissal that hinges on one damning question: If it was going to end this way, why did I know you so long, anyway? (Here’s an official hat tip for The Stanley Brothers lyrical homage, by the way.) “I Spend My Time Crying” is “There’s a Tear in My Beer” for a world where men are less coy with their emotions. Caspian saddles up to the bar and tells the bartender to keep it coming, because he wants to forget rather than have fun. This isn’t entertainment; this is real life. He squeezes four stages of grief into these three minutes, trying his best to find his way to the fifth one but failing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCaspian’s disappointment isn’t confined to the lost relationship, either. “Lock and Key” is a classic tale of a so-called friend who found it easier to cooperate with the cops than share his slice of the consequences. It’s an anti-snitch anthem, a blown-out slab of righteousness that would have fit on some Yazoo compilation about outlaws and street justice. All of this disappointment funnels down into “Darker the Night the Brighter I See,” the brilliant and broken closer that will frighten you about life’s dark prospects in the same way Blind Willie Johnson did 99 years ago. “More that you see, the darker it goes,” Caspian sings, some friends howling and taunting like a Greek chorus of ghosts behind him. “It’s darker now than it used to be\/That’s the brighter I see.” It is abyssal, a slippery slope leading permanently to the opposite of acceptance. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDespite all these woes, Holy Cross Tigers weirdly has this cumulative sense of radiance, a feeling of reflected light that pushes against the sadness of these subjects. This feels, instead, like the kind of folk Alan Lomax might have documented or Harry Smith might have collected—a few friends sharing the burdens of life with one another, the results inherently strange and even ecstatic because they are operating by their own rules, rules they have discovered and implemented only for themselves. Holy Cross Tigers is the fourth Twisted Teens album but the first that feels immediately and entirely relatable. It is a blown-out transmission from the lip of heartbreak, a place where even the lucky have been and from which they have hopefully returned. That is, it sounds an awful lot like the truth. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Twisted Teens","offers":[{"title":"Loser (color) LP","offer_id":43142557925472,"sku":"717550","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":43142557958240,"sku":"717552","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cassette","offer_id":43142557991008,"sku":"717554","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":43142557892704,"sku":"717556","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0110\/1882\/9920\/files\/TwistedTeens_HolyCrossTigers_Mockup_LP_2000x1417_9eac82f9-a432-4781-b71d-dd533d652455.jpg?v=1788998153","url":"https:\/\/megamart.subpop.com\/products\/twisted-teens_the-holy-cross-tigers","provider":"Sub Pop Mega Mart","version":"1.0","type":"link"}