ALBUM OF THE WEEK – Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave
The broody Glaswegians return with their third album and it’s dark, emotionally raw, beautiful and our ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Album Reviews | Released
The Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave
Fat Cat Records
5 out of 5
They’re not called The Twilight Happy for a reason, the Glaswegians latest offering is bleak, emotionally raw and beautiful. With most of the song titles and indeed the album title on their third album are mainly about death, drowning, suicide and the month of January (Well who doesn’t hate that month?) you know not to expect Pharell Williams covers.
The opening line of There’s a Girl in the Corner is ‘You’re not coming back, you’re not coming back from this’ and this sets the scene for the rest of the album and maybe gives you an idea of the tone of the record and what frame of mind frontman James Graham is in. It sounds like Radiohead’s ‘All I Need’ bass line with delay drenched guitars that Interpol’s Daniel Kessler would’ve written if he’d been brought up in Govan.
The band have always been proud of their Glasgow roots, the authentic Glaswegian swagger that emanates out of every word Graham pronounces is genuine. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing The Twilight Sad live, you would have witnessed the amount of emotion and commitment Graham gives to every song, often manic looking and lost in the meaning of the song and he’s managed to keep that intensity on this record. The more subtle moments on I Could Give You All That You Don’t Want and the synth led It Was Never The Same gives you a chance to hear Graham’s fragility, ‘We asked to save them all, we tried to save them all, you didn’t have to kill them all”. Nice.
In Nowheres is an industrial powerhouse of a song. Mark Devine’s drumming sounds like he’s pounding his way into the earth’s core. This then, perhaps, is the perfect time to introduce the crucial backbone of Twilight Sad in drummer Mark Devine and Andy MacFarlane, the protagonist guitarist. MacFarlane single handily creates the sonic soundscapes that gives the Twilight Sad their distinct sound whilst Devine’s relentless visceral drumming through the record gives it the Glasgow Kiss treatment. The band have also added a valuable synth sound to this record which you can hear at its best on Leave The House which blends a Casio sounding drum beat with an eerily chilling church organ synth which erupts into an epic finish that is standard Twilight Sad territory, blistering.
Title track Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To, is a shoegazey mix of My Bloody Valentine, fellow Scots, Glasvegas and Dirty Beaches. MacFarlane swoons in and out with a tremolo armed attack of guitars as the song builds and builds around the linear vocal of James Graham over a drum machine before Devine kicks in with the drums that carries the song through to its climax.
Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave is The Twilight Sad’s best album yet, with light there must be shade and these Scotsmen provide plenty of the black stuff. They’ve produced a record that will only reiterate the fact that they’re one of the most consistent Scottish bands around. Whilst they may not seem happy sometimes, they must be quietly grinning to themselves like Cheshire cats with the results on Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave.
Rob McCleary
Live photo credit – Shaun Gordon
