It’s not restraint. It’s not a
lack of anything. There are things that were present that no longer are, but it
isn’t indicative of a weakness. Rather, this absence of certain things has
created space for new ideas and sounds to grow. It’s the next stage in the
evolution of The Twilight Sad that we heard sonic glimpses of on Forget the Night Ahead back in 2009, and
despite the relative sparseness of sound compared to previous releases it’s
safe to say that No One Can Ever Know
has a great deal of depth to it.
Album opener Alphabet takes the listener right into the heart of this ‘new’
sound. James Graham’s distinctive Scottish drawl, as strong as it’s ever been,
tells a tale as macabre as any featured in their back catalogue. When he tells
us that he’s “so sick to death of this side of you now, safe to say never
wanted you more, and you ask for one more go,” he goes on to say that “she’s
lying on the road, now she’s lying on her own.” Lyrically, they’ve definitely
not gone to explore the lighter side of things. Musically, however, rather than
the wall of distorted guitars and noise that came to characterize The Twilight
Sad, we now have the synths and metronomic basslines of multi-instrumentalist Andy MacFarlane and drummer
Mark Devine setting the tempo.
On Dead City it becomes obvious that there’s no less energy, just a
different kind of energy; a different kind of anger. There’s a build-up
here and, honestly, it’s all the more enjoyable for not being lost behind a
screen of white-noise. There’s distortion but it’s not taking centre stage,
instead there’s a miserably bleak yet distinctively pop aesthetic that prevails
throughout the album. A lot of reviews are going to focus on the fact that the
band have looked back to bands that initially crafted this kind of sound; your
PiL’s and your Neu!’s and that ilk. And yet, for all this looking back, there’s
more a sense of looking forward. On Sick,
James sings “And over the hill, over the hill we go...and I’ll buy you the night,
and I’ll buy you the time, we can do anything you want.” It’s almost like
they’re explicitly stating that they are moving to where the grass is greener.
However, if you read it like that then you can read the next part as their
intent to sell out by doing what the audience wants. YET, James also says that
he’ll “never go with you tonight,” so perhaps this is a really bad analogy.
The important thing is that from
the electronically tinged synthetic pop to the bleak stories played out across
city-scapes (for theirs is the sound of a city, make no mistake) filtered
through the 80’s influenced sound of 2012, The Twilight Sad have made an album
that is the sum of all their parts and succeeded. Their new single Another Bed is a perfect example of
this; something that could have gone spectacularly wrong yet ended up sounding
triumphant and totally desolate at the same time. It’s a wonderful blend of
soaring synths, a frenetic bass line, and a more subtle vocal than you would
expect from the band. There’s a new beat being set, and it’s the sound of a
band hitting their stride. Third album blues? The Twilight Sad have plenty of
blues, but that’s no bad thing.
No One Can Ever Know is
released on 6th February via Fat Cat Records
LD
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