Review Summary: An ideal musical accompaniment to the cold and depressing month of February.
I’m an avid admirer of pretty much anything coughed up in wind swept hills of Scotland, but I must admit I’ve often found The Twilight Sad to be a bit of a drag. They may be among the most acclaimed acts of the current tartan crop, but for me, at least, there’s always been an uninviting aspect to their music which has rendered it largely impenetrable. The dense and noisy soundscapes that they’ve specialised in have been nothing if not accomplished, but at the same time they've done very little to entice me into revisiting.
A post-punk reinvention is hardly something you’d recommend to a band that leaves one so cold, but that’s exactly what the Kilsyth trio have done on this third full length. On the surface, the results are just as chilly as you’d imagine. This is desolate music, devoid of any form of warmth, with what life it could have had sucked out by industrial instrumental tones and James Graham's broader-than-broad Glaswegian drawl - which coupled together act like a musical accompaniment to liquid nitrogen. I thought it improbable that The Twilight Sad could become any less welcoming, but that eventuality has most certainly arisen with
No One Can Ever Know.
While that frosty bite has been a turn-off in the past , however, this time they make it work to their advantage. This is in fact a sound which plays to their strengths infinitely more than the post-rock leanings of
Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters and
Forget The Night Ahead, and as such the record as a whole tends to be far more enjoyable. By and large, the nine songs here are all calculated and mid-tempo, allowing Graham's fabulous dialect to grab the spotlight and dictate proceedings. His voice was a weapon often buried under the weight of distortion on their previous recordings, but here it's given the freedom in which to shine, and the results are suitably impressive.
Aside from that, the main strength the band draw on with this record is an entirely new addition to their pallet. Bringing synths into the mix is hardly the most original step for a band of their type, but the icy electronics drafted in here do a brilliant job in fleshing out the bare bones of their sound. The way in which they incorporate them isn't too dissimilar from the efforts of fellow brits White Lies and Editors, but thankfully they pull off the transition with a great deal more subtlety and sophistication than either of those contemporaries. Generally, it's the tones and textures which excel as opposed to the actual songs, with sinister second track 'Dead City' being perhaps the only individual moment that stands out, but that pallet is of such a quality that definitive highlights are scarcely needed.
As different as it seems to those earlier releases, the truth is that this record possesses many of the same elements - the main difference being that it makes far better use of them. It's still not an especially easy listen, especially given that there's practically no variation, but sometimes a lack of diversity can be the best way to exhibit such a shift in focus. As with all records of its type,
No One Can Ever Know is bound to be met with a mixed reception, but for this writer, at least, it's improved efficiency makes it comfortably the strongest Twilight Sad outing yet.
