Boston’s Twisted Pine brings reinvention to Sinclair show

Twisted Pine has become famous for its twisted covers. The Boston-based quartet has managed to completely reimagine songs from a bizarre and wonderful range of acts — Blondie to Scissor Sisters, Fleetwood Mac to Frank Zappa. But the band can also remake its own catalog with an equal dose of enthusiasm and experimentalism.

“We’ll take covers and interpret them in really interesting ways,” flute player Anh Phung told the Herald. “But even when it’s our music we’re still doing that. We’re always rearranging and changing and giving things room to morph.”

Twisted Pine has its work cut out for itself when it comes to changing the music on new LP “Love Your Mind.” Why and how do you begin to alter tracks so finely crafted, so intricately produced? (Full disclosure, I helped prepare some publicity materials for the release.)

The band came out of Boston’s Americana scene with strong bluegrass ties. Phung, lead singer and fiddle player Kathleen Parks, mandolin player Dan Bui and bassist Chris Sartori can still pick and pluck with the barnburning best of the bluegrass world. But with each studio release, Twisted Pine has expanded its sound.

“We love the studio as its own entity,” Sartori said ahead of the band’s Nov. 30 show at the Sinclair. “We’re a very elastic band. The energy of a live room is very different from the energy of a studio, but we try to fill each space as it wants to be filled.”

Twisted Pine really stretched to fill “Love Your Mind.”

Co-producing with frequent-collaborator Dan Cardinal at Dimension Sound in Boston, the band added little nods to buoyant reggae, groovy funk, bright pop, tender folk, honkytonk twang, and Latin jazz. The pull from genre to genre comes with the musicians often layering instruments with effects — Park’s fiddle can get a whammy pedal makeover, Phung’s flute might be looped through samples or slowed down so it resembles a saxophone.

The sonic stylist shifts and studio flourish are awesome. But they succeed because the tunes are so tight, smart, polished and passionate. “Chanel Perfume” evokes classic Motown and Stax soul vibes. “Knockout Roses” has all the magic of a gem by country & western songwriting ace Cindy Walker. (And there are just two of many standouts.)

“We want to record and write in this really big way that’s supposed to reach as many people as it possibly can and as many different types of listeners as it possibly can,” Park said.

With the record out, it’s now time for Twisted Pine to fill those live rooms with stretched tunes. It’s time for the band to cover itself in concert.

“There is a lot of room to explore these songs live,” Bui said. “(Many of the new songs) we are still seeing how they develop because they haven’t been codified yet. We’re still interpreting them live.”

Twisted Pine will likely be interpreting and re-interpreting the songs on “Love Your Mind” for years to come. And it will come with all that trademark enthusiasm and experimentalism.

For tickets and details, visit twistedpineband.com