THE TWILIGHT SAD
It’s The Long Goodbye (Rock Action)
Rather like Alan Sparhawk’s White Roses, My God, The Twilight Sad’s first LP for seven years feels not so much like an album that James Graham wanted to make as one that he simply had to: an essential part of the grieving process following his mother’s devastating dementia diagnosis and subsequent death.
His band have long been on a mission to magnify fellow Scots Idlewild’s tunefulness to the epic scale of their current label bosses Mogwai, and It’s The Long Goodbye is just as heavy sonically as it is emotionally. Massed guitars seethe and lash out, representing a form of release, however temporary. Graham refuses to hide behind the barrage, his strikingly direct lyrics a litany of desperate pleas (“Don’t leave me this way”, “Don’t take her away from me”) and anguished questions (“Why’re you leaving me?”, “Why do I feel nothing is real?”, “Is it OK to feel this way?”).
There are, as yet, no answers. The opening track might be titled Get Away From It All, but It’s The Long Goodbye is no cathartic journey out of the darkness into the light. Wracked with pain, it’s a howl of impotence and incomprehension that will leave you floored.
words BEN WOOLHEAD
