The Twilight Sad – It’s The Long Goodbye – Album Review
by Killian Laher

The first Twilight Sad album in seven years sees the band reduced to singer James Graham and guitarist Andy MacFarlane.  Fear not, they are joined by various guests across the album, with sometime Arab Strap player David Jeans on drums and Mogwai live team-member Alex Mackay on bass… along with a certain Robert Smith who supplies guitars on a couple of tracks. With MacFarlane on production, the album sounds absolutely enormous, with great big slabs of stadium-sized rock.

It opens with the snarling guitars of Get Away From It All, and Graham roars out the lyrics over huge walls of guitar on Designed To Lose and Attempt A Crash Landing – Theme.  Waiting for the Phone Call is an absolute banger, their best song in years, propulsive keyboards combined with a relentless guitar riff that will bury itself in your brain, like the best post-punk riff you’ve ever heard.

There are highlights across the album. Dead Flowers combines a foreboding bassline with scratchy guitars and twinkling keyboards; the guitar riff on the excellent Inhospitable/Hospital is reminiscent of Killing Joke, while Chestwound’s gauzy guitars form a tune Interpol would be proud of.

Back to Fourteen (a reference to their debut album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters?) begins on piano, more stripped back than anything else here, before transforming into a tough-sounding rocker.  Final track TV People Still Throwing TVs At People begins gingerly with James Graham singing “it’s ok to feel this way” before it explodes into life towards the end as he desperately sings “it’s ok to feel this way, I don’t want to feel this way” over and over, something of a catharsis, perhaps?

The band is very much alive and well, possibly the stadium rockers it’s ok to like?  They’re coming to a big show near you this summer!

Waiting For The Phone Call