Fraternal Twin
A time capsule that goes back over a decade — and a snapshot of where the band is right now.
New York’s Fraternal Twin — the project of Tom Christie — share Skin Gets Hot (Deluxe) today, an expanded edition of their cult 2015 debut. The release includes two new studio recordings tracked at Chateau Grand in Brooklyn with producer Dan Howard (Forth Wanderers, Victoryland): a full-band re-recording of the title track and “Better Off,” a previously unreleased song that somehow didn’t make the original cut. Ten cassette demos from the era round out the package.
New music from Fraternal Twin is also confirmed for later this year — making this both a proper send-off for the debut decade and a bridge toward whatever comes next.
“A dense, beautiful, and often-haunting patchwork of bedroom pop and baroque textures. It sounds timeless in its weight and wholeness.”
— Impose Magazine on Skin Gets HotHudson Valley to New York City
Tom Christie started Fraternal Twin in the summer of 2013, fleshing out songs in New York’s Hudson Valley and recording Skin Gets Hot over the following year at Salvation Recording Co. in New Paltz, NY, with engineer and producer Christopher Daly. The original sessions drew in a rotating cast that included Aaron Maine of Porches on drums and bass, reflecting the tight-knit orbit of the NYC indie underground that would become Fraternal Twin’s natural home.
The album arrived quietly in the spring of 2015, passed from fan to fan, and developed the cult reputation that 11 years later still defines it — Stereogum, Impose, and Ghost Ramp’s vinyl reissue all testifying to the fact that a record this intimate doesn’t need a promotional push to find the people it belongs to. The current lineup — Christie alongside Marco Spodek (drums), Mariah Houston (guitar), and Forrest Philpot (bass) — came together for a tour last summer and stuck, giving the band its first stable New York-based configuration in years.
“I’ve had this vague idea to re-record the title track with the live band for quite a while now, but it didn’t materialize until earlier this year, along with a sort of lost song called ‘Better Off’ that, for some reason, didn’t end up on the album all those years ago.”
— Tom ChristieWhat’s on the Deluxe Edition
The two new studio recordings were produced by Dan Howard at Chateau Grand in Brooklyn — a room with a growing reputation in the New York indie underground, and a natural fit for songs that live in the gap between slowcore and baroque pop. “Skin Gets Hot (Revisited)” arrives with an official music video today. “Better Off” surfaces for the first time, a decade after it was passed over in the original sequencing. Sometimes the lost songs are the right ones.
The demo disc pulls eight tracks from Christie’s cassette archive: “Fingers,” “Better Off,” “Boil,” “July (Turnaround),” “Skin Gets Hot,” “Shadowgoing,” “Like the Comet,” and “Skeleton” — including at least one track, “Skeleton,” that never appeared on the finished album at all. Together they form a genuine time capsule: the record as it sounded in the room before it became the record.
Skin Gets Hot
- 1Hourglass
- 2Waterway
- 3Fingers
- 4Like the Comet
- 5Lose My Balance
- 6Boil
- 7Werewolves
- 8Skin Gets Hot
- 9Shadowgoing
- 10July (Turnaround)
Deluxe Additions
- 11Skin Gets Hot (revisited)
- 12Better Off
- 13Fingers [demo]
- 14Better Off [demo]
- 15Boil [demo]
- 16July (Turnaround) [demo]
- 17Skin Gets Hot [demo]
- 18Shadowgoing [demo]
- 19Like the Comet [demo]
- 20Skeleton [demo]
“A lot of muscle and clarity.”
— StereogumWhat Comes Next
The deluxe edition is a line drawn under the debut decade — thorough, unhurried, and honest about what the record actually was rather than what it might have been polished into. Christie’s note about the band being in “a period of transition” last year, and the new lineup quietly cohering around that instability, is the most useful frame for where Fraternal Twin is now. Patient, as the bio says. Tectonic. Willing to wait for the moment to be right.
New music is confirmed for 2026. With the debut properly addressed and a stable four-piece in place, whatever comes next will be the first Fraternal Twin record made from a settled position. That changes what a band can do. The songs unfurl at a glacial pace — but they do eventually explode. Keep watching.
Skin Gets Hot (Deluxe) is out today. Stream the full 20-track edition and watch the “Skin Gets Hot (Revisited)” video at the links below.
