Thanks to its political connotations, the phrase “No Labels” has become a nasty word. However, Nashville by way of Boston guitar rockers Twen have embraced it for entirely different reasons; they have no record label, and don’t want one.
“Twen” was a German youth magazine from the 1960s. There is indeed plenty of 1960s influence in Twen’s garage-rock music, particularly on early releases like their 2019 debut, Awestruck. Consisting of vocalist Jane Fitzsimmons and guitarist Ian Jones, plus session musicians Asher Horton and Forrest Raup, Twen must be the hardest-working band in showbiz, crisscrossing the country since 2021, playing hundreds of self-booked shows out of a converted live-in van. Fate Euphoric is their latest album, and “adore” is not too strong a word for what I consider the finest rock release of 2025.
Modesty is not among Twen’s shortcomings. Quoth Jones in a 2024 “Off the Record” web interview: “We write great songs and we put on a fucking great live show and we’ve done it 500 times… People keep coming up to us saying they just discovered [2022’s One Stop Shop] and that it’s their favorite record and we’re their favorite band.” Fitzsimmons continues, “We’ve been spending a lot of time in Florida. I think Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, and early 2000s pop has really infiltrated our brain.”
Granted, this snooty reviewer has always harbored a guilty soft spot for Sugar Ray. Aside from those self-declared influences, Twen’s pop sensibilities (especially Fitzsimmons’ laconic vocals) recall recent 1960s devotees, such as the Heavy Heavy, or Courtney Love‘s more sophisticated, pop-savvy approach from Hole‘s 1998 album Celebrity Skin. Plenty of critics didn’t cleave to Hole’s more refined direction, but I did, and believe Twen is on the right track here for similar reasons.
Start with the shimmery yet angular guitar and joyful harmonies on “Chase You”, which manages to sound punkish, dreamy, and jangly all at the same time. “The Center” chimes like a mid-career Byrds single, never an easy feat. “Allnighter” is a flowing, road-worthy anthem featuring what may be Fate Euphoric’s most thrilling riff. Meanwhile, the chugging title track introduces weavy, psychedelic keyboard effects to close out this excellent album.
Final money quote from Jones: “We are doing everything ourselves. We write, we produce, we engineer, we mix and master it. It is directly from our heart to your eardrums, or our heart to your heart. So that is the biggest difference [from our debut record], that it’s truly us rather than us with somebody else.” Gotta respect that. Twen are currently on an extensive concert tour, with numerous bar dates across the East, South, Midwest, and California. Hard to believe, but it seems they’ll be driving to all of them.