Over a decade ago, local singer-songwriter and guitarist Macario Gutierrez quietly released his solo debut track “Dear, Departed.” This yearning ballad is a declaration of love written for the hopeless romantics of the world. Its melodic construct packs an emotional gut punch played both acoustically and at full volume, and its tearjerking effect still works today.

“​​I released it in 2011 and people still want to hear it,” says Gutierrez.

At the time he didn’t know that “Dear, Departed,” along with a number of other songs written during that period, would become part of his lifelong project, Twin Cities. “I was releasing a couple of songs here and there under my name and I decided to change it from being a solo project to Twin Cities,” says Gutierrez. “I wanted to distance myself as a person from the music.”

(Strictly speaking, Twin Cities has no relation to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area; the name was inspired by mentions of another midwestern duo in Fargo, a TV show Gutierrez happened to be watching at the time.)

Gutierrez quickly formed an ensemble of local musicians for this new project, released the debut EP The Winter and started playing gigs. This period in local music history is niche—back when smoking American Spirits, wearing sagging beanies and illegally tight jeans, and hanging at house shows was part of the cool guy ensemble—and it’s time-stamped by the emo/screamo bands that dominated the scene. Twin Cities was a valve in the heart of it all, alongside local projects like Alaska, Oranges and Stolas.

Soon enough, Twin Cities had stamped its “I’ve played there” card at nearly every all-ages venue the city had to offer at that time.

“There hit a point where I wanted to tour—we played 58 shows in 64 days with the band Alaska,” says Gutierrez. “I quit my day job to do that and quitting was the best thing I could’ve done for myself to pursue being in a band.”

That initial outing sparked a frenzy of DIY tours for Twin Cities, from 2014 to 2019. The band made out-of-state runs every couple of months, played with big names like Balance and Composure, and became a “new and notable” featured artist on Bandcamp.

When Gutierrez’s career in music production took off, Twin Cities unavoidably slowed down. The band released the occasional single and played a sprinkling of live sets. But while bands, trends and friends moved on, Gutierrez stayed grounded in what he’s always known best—music.

Now, he finds himself on the right side of the soundboard again, revamping Twin Cities with a permanent lineup. With Cameron Gile (bass), Dustin Elias-Odgers (keys), Mikey Haddad (guitar) and Alex Klinger (drums), the band is slowly extracting and releasing previously recorded songs that have been vaulted away for years.

“All of us were living our lives and getting our careers together and now that we’re settled in a bit, we thought, ‘Let’s get to this’,” says Gutierrez.

He credits Gile with pushing the project forward with his creative content direction: Since the bassist joined, Twin Cities has taken on a newfound presence on social media by sharing TikTok and Instagram videos showcasing the band’s jam sessions, showing snippets of new releases, and dropping humorous clips from the road, like the “Barstow Burrito Latte Challenge.”

More importantly, they’re dropping new music. The latest EP Better is a compilation of tracks that were composed in touch and go fashion from 2016 to 2017. The five-song extended play retains Twin Cities’ distinctive melodic guitar structures, while introducing rhythm and drum sections that hold a density and create a new exciting dynamic. To accompany the release, the band unveiled its first ever music video for “Patience,” a standout track that utilizes textural instrumentation and crescendos from its woeful starting point, teetering between a fiery place and acceptance.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for Twin Cities, Gutierrez says. We should expect to hear much more from the band during this resurgence.

“I’ll always have Twin Cities as an emotional outlet to release music under,” he says. “I never expect people to come to shows but it always surprises me that people still show up.”

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