The Twilight Sad - Forget the Night Ahead

The second full length offering from the Twilight Sad sees them, if anything, darker and more unsettled than on Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters or the intervening EP's. Titles like I Became a Prostitute, The Neighbours Can't Breathe are testament to that. So too are the snatched lyrics - 'There's people downstairs', 'You're the bearer of a womb without love', ' They put up no fight.. we'll bury them all' - all lay down an underpinning but still opaque sense of threat and foreboding.

All sounds pretty gloomy stuff but there is something I can't stop listening to here. James Graham's vocals are in a heavy Glaswegian brogue that adds an urgency and directness to the already oddly threatening lyrics, Andy MacFarlanes sundry noises, accordion and signature guitar sound (reminiscent of the Kitchens of Distinction sound) are under scored by the bass lines and squelchy drum sounds from Craig Orzel and Mark Devine. Given the uncompromisingly miserabilist lyrics you do feel that a night out with Mr Graham might be quite a depressing affair.

Although so far it seems to be the early tracks of the album that have burned their way into the memory - especially I Became a Prostitute and Seven Years of Letters, I am sure that the later tracks will inveigle their way in, perhaps That Birthday Present for example (that really does sound like a very grumpy and miserable Kitchens of Distinction somehow)

Well really surely the clutch of Scottish bands must be complete now? Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks and There Will be Fireworks - to a man all with enigmatic band names. Worth a mention too that on the day of this new Twilight Sad album comes the official release of those other Scottish heroes Idlewild's latest and self released album, Post Electric Blues

Twilight Sad website

Twilight Sad Myspace

Idlewild website

Idelwild Myspace

Kitchens of Distinction Myspace

Stephen Hero/Kitchens of Distinction website

There Will Be Fireworks

Warning - I am really rather liking this alot. Another band from north of the border, down Glasgow way, inevitably bundled up with the likes of Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Twilight Sad and so forth. Whilst its great to have a such a clutch of new bands from this fertile caledonian patch, I do hope they don't get bogged down with that as they are very much their own band.

This eponymous album was released at the start of July despite the band, incredibly, not being signed to a label. Although they are all hideously young blades there is a maturity in approach and sound, a complexity that grabs the attention and marks them out. Not simply another climactic band sound but one that seems prepared to take some chances. The opener, Columbian Fireworks, does this from the off. With apparently specially lyrics/poetry written and read by Kevin MacNeil, the Stornoway poet/writer/musician, the track is scarcely what you might expect from the first track from a first album - no disernible melody but high on atmosphere.

The album rolls through quiet almost delicate tracks interspersed with harder, angrier tracks with Nicholas McManus spitting out the words, not really singing, off key with emotion. Midfield Maestro is a fine fine track (the vid below is blessed by the fabulous Barra landscapes) and contains some evocative lyrics - 'we'll set these tapes on fire, as your heart breaks in my car, you're unravelling in my arms'. Off With Their Heads sees McManus at his least musical vocally but still highly affecting.

If there is any justice TWBF should have a successful second half of 2009, especially if people drop by their web shop and spend the paltry £8 on this fine piece of work (and rather beautifully packaged too with splendid photos from Jonathon Pritchard)

Next question is - how would they translate this to a live show? Well fix some shows where I can get to them and maybe we'd see...

'Midfield Maestro' by There Will Be Fireworks from Peter Gerard on Vimeo.

Buy the album !

There will Be Fireworks Myspace

Kevin MacNeil Myspace

We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Another rather late set of comments on this Scottish bunch of lads. The debut album, out on Brighton based Fat Cat Records has been with me a while and has earned a nice little warm corner in my heart.

I think that rather strangely I first heard them via the KEXP posts from Seattle when DJ Shannon got onto them on a trip to the UK. Nothing was available for some time unless you managed to get to one of their gigs, usually north of the border. But the album is now here and well worth geting hold of.

They sit in that clutch of new Scottish bands that includes Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad as well as There Will Be Fireworks (of whom more later when their debut hits the mat). In addition to the always alluring Caledonian-ness of the band they have that wonderful energy and immediacy that often gets lost with the passing years. But right now the chaps are young and eager and Adam Thompsons vocals are full throated and uninhibited, in the sort of way that, for example, flamenco singers really let rip, and even if the notes are sometimes not quite nailed, that isn't the point, the point is in the delivery and the gusto behind it.

That said, alongside full ahead stuff like Quiet Little Voices and Ships With Holes Will Sink, there are other sides to the Jetpacks like Conductor and This is My House, This is My Home which is both quieter and stranger.

The chaps are out on tour later this year in the UK (over the summer in the US alongside Frightened Rabbit), and I shall be trekking along tothe dubious delights of The Cooler in Bristol to experience them live and firsthand.

Fat Cat Records website

We Were Promised Jetpacks Myspace

Frightened Rabbit Myspace

Twilight Sad Myspace

There WillBe Fireworks Myspace

Photo credit: Neil Thomas Douglas