We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.

Unsubscribe any time.

Beachwood Sparks bassist Brent Rademaker merely moonlights in his brother Darren’s band, the Tyde, but to judge by the latter’s new Twice, he might want to reconsider which gig to pursue full time. Despite sharing common musical influences (the three Bs of late-’60s El Lay: the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Beach Boys), the two groups take very different approaches to songwriting, the Sparks’ abstract and atmospheric, the Tyde’s disciplined and pop-smart. One method isn’t necessarily better than the other, but after two-and-a-half albums, the Sparks have yet to write a single memorable song, whereas the Tyde’s sophomore effort is chock-full of them. Darren establishes himself here as a first-rate singer-songwriter and a producer in the hallowed SoCal tradition—which apparently includes having plenty of Brian Wilson-esque issues about working well with others. Nearly every song is concerned with creative differences, intraband squabbling, sibling rivalry, romantic woes, or some combination thereof. Darren’s take on the Rademaker brothers’ music-making saga—which includes playing together in the band Further in the mid-’90s, preceding the Beachwood/Tyde divide—is recounted in “A Loner”: “Your friends are frequent on the scene/With different kinds of dreams/Ain’t heading no place I ain’t already been/And when things don’t work out like we planned…/I’ll find another place to play/I’m a loner anyway.” And fraternity as defined by band life—and vice versa—informs the strummingly soulful “Blood Brothers”: “Do you want to know what it feels like to be a man?/Try spending 25 years in a band/And then you’ll be a kind of brother to me/And I’ll be that brother to you.” Such lyrical grit prevents the Tyde’s rootsy psych-pop from being merely pretty, and elsewhere the band mixes up the canonical SoCal approach with an out-of-left-field homage to ’80s janglers Felt. On “Crystal Canyons”—the title alone humorously suggests the hyperpoetic Lawrence penning an ode to the Laurel Canyon sound—the combination of Ann Do’s Martin Duffy-style keys with Darren’s chiming guitar lines and mumbled declamations borders on copyright infringement. But in a good way: Like Belle and Sebastian and the Aislers Set, the Tyde blends the best of ’60s and ’80s pop into something fresh enough to leave in your CD changer all summer long. —Todd Hitchcock