The lookalike ladies of Lucius bring their retro look and sound to Union Transfer

AUSTIN, TEXAS - The first thing you notice about Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, the frontwomen of Lucius, the five-piece Brooklyn indie pop band that will play Union Transfer on Saturday, is . . . well, that you're not sure which is which.

That's not because the two BFFs, who met as freshman at Berklee College of Music in Boston and have been making music together since they were sophomores a dozen years ago, look all that much alike. In fact, Laessig is several inches taller than her singing and songwriting musical coconspirator.

Still, a first glance might make you think the women of Lucius - which also includes three guys, one of whom, bass player Dan Molad, is married to Wolfe - were related.

When performing, Wolfe and Laessig face each other at twin microphones and always sport matching, retro-chic outfits and hairstyles that are of a piece with the band's self-conscious update of '60s girl-group pop.

On the Radio Day Stage at the Austin Convention Center during the South by Southwest music festival this month in support of their new album, Good Grief (Mom + Pop ***), they wore identical orange pompadours and cape-and-skirt ensembles.

The David Bowie fashion statement - brought off with the aid of Christian Joy, who has also designed for Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Santigold - was completed with an Aladdin Sane lightning-bolt pattern. A jittery cover of Bowie's "Let's Dance" is included as a bonus track on the Good Grief deluxe edition.

The Lucius onstage uniform - the boys in the band also wear matching clothes, in this case, less outlandish pale-yellow suit jackets and dress shirts - "unifies us and puts us in a state of mind," says Laessig, talking backstage after the SXSW show before the band got whisked off to perform at Willie Nelson's ranch in Luck, Texas. "And, hopefully, it brings the audience along with us into another world for an hour."

"It's also an extension of the two voices working as one," Wolfe says. "It's another way to look onstage and see the unit."

Laessig and Wolfe are superb harmony singers, and they've been employed on other people's prestige indie albums, including: San Fermin's 2013 self-titled debut; 2014's Sukierae by the band Tweedy, featuring Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer; and the Rentals' 2014 album, Lost in Alphaville. And for a sample of their vocal chops, check out the improvised-live-in-the-studio harmonies in the coda to Good Grief's "Gone Insane," recorded shortly after the pair had one of their few shout-out-loud fights.

More often than not, however, on Good Grief and its 2013 predecessor Wildewoman - the band also recorded an album in 2009 called Songs From the Bromley House, which they do not consider a proper debut - Laessig and Wolfe twin their voices together. That's the approach on Good Grief's could-be breakout hit, the ultra-peppy "Born Again Teen," garnering lots of play locally on WXPN-FM (88.5), one of the SXSW Radio Day stage sponsors, as well as other NPR outlets nationally.

"It's everybody playing a mirror image in the sound and in the visuals," says Wolfe, the more outgoing of the duo. Laessig tends to nod in agreement, or occasionally finish sentences when her bandmate is searching for a particular word.

"And we like that we're connected that way," Wolfe, 31, continues. "And the artists that we love the most, that we've always been inspired by - David Bowie, Prince - have always paid attention to how their music is presented visually. Even the Supremes. In the '50s and '60s, like Elvis, you just had a uniform. It wasn't a question. You didn't get on stage with a T-shirt and jeans."

Wolfe grew up in Los Angeles, Laessig in Cleveland. But 2,000-plus miles apart, they were listening to the same records and hit it off at Berklee, quickly forming a partnership. They studied African rhythm on an extracurricular trip to Ghana and moved to Brooklyn together in 2007.

"We never really had a conversation about it," says Wolfe. "We just did it and never really questioned it." Asked whether either of them has ever had another friendship like the one they enjoy, they're both stymied.

"We have very similar taste in music," says Laessig, 30, drinking coffee while her partner goes for tea. "So in the van" - after touring the U.S. and Europe nonstop for two years behind Wildewoman, they have graduated to a bus - "the guys don't always appreciate that. We'll just be in the front, jamming out to some '90s R&B. Really good grooves. The guys will be in the back with their headphones on."

Music and art lovers in Philadelphia take note: Ice Cream, the 1964 painting by Belgian artist Evelyne Axell that is reproduced on the Wildewoman album cover is also in the "International Pop" exhibition now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was in the news last month when Facebook removed an image of the painting, which shows a woman licking an ice cream cone, for being too sexually suggestive, from the Museum of Art website. (After a hubbub, it was restored.)

In 2014, Laessig said they chose Axell's painting - and got permission for use from her family - for the cover of Wildewoman (pronounced like the animal and common crossword clue wildebeest), because "she was making a statement that's incredibly bold, and we think our show is bold. We're strong women."

Of the 2016 online dustup, she says, "They shouldn't be censoring art. There's so much on Facebook and the Internet that's so much worse. And, also, the whole point of that piece was that it is satirical. Because it was making the woman be the subject of the piece and not the object. Unlike all the pop art at the time - and throughout history - where the woman is objectified. It's just funny that the whole point of her piece was to make fun of that. And then they banned her piece."

Lucius - named for Wolfe's now-deceased English bulldog - called their new album Good Grief without Charlie Brown in mind. "We had the songs first, and we had some that were polar opposites," Wolfe says. There was a lot of Sturm und Drang after spending two years on the road, reflected in the album-closing "Dusty Trails" and in stressed-out numbers like "Gone Insane" and "My Heart Gets Caught on Your Sleeve," contrasting with the giddiness of "Born Again Teen."

"We were looking for a title that expressed both of those things and also had some humor to it. Because that's part of us, too. We wanted to make fun of ourselves: Like, 'Good grief, shut up already!' But also embracing the darkness, embracing the grief. That it's important to have the difficult moments in your life. So you can appreciate the joy."

Luciusplays at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St. Tickets: $18-$20. Information: 215-232-2100 or utphilly.com.

ddeluca@phillynews.com

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