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Personally I love the Scottish accent. I could sit a Scot in the corner and listen to them ramble on for hours. So imagine my delight when I plugged in the debut album of The Twilight Sad and found ‘that accent’ accompanied with some bloody great indie rock tunes.
These guys are a relatively new band and stories go that prior to signing with the Fat Cats label, their live shows delivered consecutive half hour ‘walls of sound’ – which apparently few could break through.
Clearly that must have just been a youthful phase, because with Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters they have delivered an album that is going to make the music world sit up and take notice.
This record is a dark, melancholic and compelling beast – with an earthy feel that makes you want to be witnessing these guys live, not just listening to it in the comfort of your own home.
The best example of this is the stunning track ‘That Summer, at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy’. It has a classical slow build, snare drums, stripped back vocals, then cue the accordion....yes the accordion.... before a surge of guitar hits you, at the same time as the vocals turn into a paranoid Glaswegian cry “They’re standing outside, and they’re looking in....and he’s plotting away”.
‘Mapped by What Surrounded Them’ follows a similar structure to ‘That Summer’, but what gets you here is how the musical textures interplay with the lyrics to create such an intense mood, "These walls are filled with blame...and she’s taken far too young” – it really is powerful stuff.
There isn’t a dud amongst the nine tracks on offer here, and while The Twilight Sad will oft be characterised by the Scottish brogue of lead singer James Graham, this debut really does hold the promise of great things to come.
Essential Tracks
Cold Days From the Birdhouse
That Summer, at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy
Mapped by What Surrounded Them
Full Track Listing
1. Cold Days From the Birdhouse (6:13)
2. That Summer, at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy (4:48)
3. Walking For Two Hours (5:15)
4. Last Year's Rain Didn't Fall Quite So Hard (3:19)
5. Talking With Fireworks/Here, It Never Snowed (5:14)
6. Mapped by What Surrounded Them (4:02)
7. And She Would Darken the Memory (5:49)
8. I'm Taking the Train Home (5:51)
9. Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (4:06)
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