Review Summary: The Sound of a Long Goodbye
When you think of Scotland, what do you think of? William Wallace? Kilts and bagpipes? Celtic and Rangers? Irn Bru? I think of those things as well, but I also think of deep, pervasive sadness thanks in part to the country's well-known roster of relentlessly depressing bands: Mogwai, Arab Strap, Frightened Rabbit, and of course, The Twilight Sad. Obviously many countries have thriving scenes centered around downbeat music, but there is something about Scotland that makes the music sound even sadder. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but it always strikes me as especially genuine and authentic. I suppose it helps that each of these bands has an album that transcends its respective genre and really leaves a lingering emotional scar.
Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave is one of those albums for me. It came out in a time when I was just starting to explore a bit of every genre under the sun just to get a taste of each, while also keeping up with new releases. I can’t remember exactly what drew me to it. Maybe it was the buzz, maybe it was the striking album art or maybe I just wanted to try something different, but I do remember its impact on me. It was an instant connection. The musical blend of post-punk, stripped-back indie rock, gothic elements and shoegaze was completely captivating and unlike anything I had heard before. However, it’s the depressing, somber atmosphere that has really stuck with me over the years and keeps me coming back. I typically hate music descriptions based on weather as they are often so cliche and trite, but the album is so perfectly evocative of a rainy, foggy and gloomy Glasgow night that I can’t help but vividly picture it.
Over a decade has passed, and quite a bit has happened since. The band was actually considering hanging it up until they were personally chosen by Robert Smith to open for The Cure on tour. The experience seemed to rejuvenate them, sparking a friendship that continues to this day. Smith even features on three songs here. After five long years, we finally received a follow-up album in
It Won/t Be Like This All the Time, which saw the band explore a more ‘80s-inspired synth-driven direction, along with stronger pop influences. It’s hard not to recognize the impact Smith left on them. It was unmistakably The Twilight Sad, but taken in a new direction that was almost equally as satisfying. It would take another seven years before we heard news of a new album. In the time between records, lead singer James Graham’s mother was diagnosed with dementia. The condition gradually worsened over the years with Graham having to leave a tour with The Cure in 2023 to be at home with his mother and newborn son. The band had been creating material slowly over the years, but after she passed in 2025, they finally regained the strength to craft that material together into something cohesive. The result of that difficult process is
It’s the Long Goodbye, an album that transforms that deep, personal struggle into what may be one of the clearest illustrations of catharsis through art.
“And why are you leaving me? Why are you slowly leaving me?” from the opening track “Get Away From It All” are lines repeated by James Graham that waste no time diving into the tragic inspiration behind the album. The song closes out in typical Twilight Sad fashion, with a gargantuan crescendo of swirling, reverb-drenched guitars and noise. This is only pierced by Graham’s cries of “And I’m the son you know” and “You’re my mother”. This kind of blunt, direct lyricism is the right approach for such a pure, naked bearing of the soul. This feeling sets the tone for
It’s the Long Goodbye and doesn’t relent, with those potent emotions permeating and reverberating through the rest of the album. You can almost hear the emotional weight that had been bearing down on Graham begin to lift through the music. The album hits all the beats you would want from such an intense subject, touching on trauma, grief, loss, mortality and how to understand these complex, multifaceted feelings. Graham consistently finds just the right way to express them in a way that is as simple as it is evocative without ever being overbearing.
The way James Graham structures his songs and vocal melodies plays a large part in what sets The Twilight Sad apart from their contemporaries. He is the absolute king of using repetition, often repeating lines four or five times to hammer home emotion while creating memorable choruses in the process. In a genre known for subdued vocals, these repeated phrases often build alongside escalating instrumentation, resulting in truly bombastic hooks that Graham belts out at the top of his lungs. It’s such an excellent use of juxtaposition, the bleakness of the lyrics against the almost jubilant pull of a catchy hook. That contrast creates a unique emotional tension that’s difficult to fully articulate.
I can’t overstate how special a talent Graham is; he is the engine that drives the band forward. He nails the restrained, moody delivery typical of post-punk, as well as more soulful crooning, even incorporating touches of falsetto that are excellently deployed on “Designed to Lose”, while never shying away from going larger than life. He can do it all, and does so in true powerhouse fashion. All of it is delivered in his thick, native Scottish accent, which is especially striking to my American ears. In a way, that accent acts as a kind of sadness amplifier, sharpening every aching syllable, even in the way he rolls his r’s. You couldn’t build a better vocalist in a lab.
A true superstar needs the right band behind him. The Twilight Sad have had a rocky road of lineup changes in the years between albums, losing three longtime members. In their place, the band has effectively become a duo built around James Graham and primary sonic architect Andy MacFarlane. They aren’t entirely alone, though, having recruited Arab Strap drummer David Jeans and Mogwai touring bassist Alex Mackay as session musicians. I mean, what is this, a dream team of all of Scotland’s most depressed indie rockers? Oh, and you also add in Robert Smith on a few tracks. It’s hard to conjure up a more fitting cast of characters, and it’s felt all throughout
It’s the Long Goodbye. The band sounds as expansive and grandiose as ever. Their gloomy, atmospheric guitar melodies, melancholic synths, and sudden, signature explosive crescendos haven’t missed a beat.
These elements are layered with precision; when one recedes, another begins to build, each complementing the other. All of these building blocks come together wonderfully on the incredibly ‘80s “Waiting for the Phone Call”, which starts on a danceable beat, adds pounding guitars, backing melodies, delicate drumming, and continues to escalate until its conclusion. Its use of poppy synths, a classic, subdued hook of “Watch me die” and that fiery build forms a bridge between the new and old approaches to post-punk, fitting given Smith’s feature. The intimate vocal performance and dreary lyrics clash with overwhelming, fuzzy climaxes in a way that shouldn’t work, but has become The Twilight Sad’s defining trademark.
There is just something about the band that grows with me after multiple listens. Neither this nor the previous album really immediately struck me. In fact, I was somewhat disappointed in each respectively on my first go-around. They are a band that rewards patient listeners; the builds are subtle yet intricate as the densely layered instrumentation slowly reveals itself over time. You peel back the layers and it suddenly unfolds, sounds cascade around you. “Dead Flowers” couldn’t be a better showcase of this feeling. Its opening two minutes are entirely vocalless, built on a simple synth line and drumbeat that initially feels almost off-putting, until you realize where it’s heading. As always, the band carefully adds layers and fuzz so gradually that you miss it in real time, before suddenly realizing the song has fully transformed into their noisy shoegaze climax by the back half. It also highlights some of James Graham’s most playful wordplay, with its second verse rhyming “water off a duck’s back” with “give me my ***s back,” delivered in a repeated, slightly varied series of lines that builds into what is probably the most fun moment on the album.
“TV People Still Throwing TVs at People” however, is entirely immediate. The song brings a heavy post-rock, Mogwai-esque flair that fuses perfectly with its emotional arc, with Graham’s haunting crooning spread throughout. The guitars gradually rise, a simple synthesized drum beat enters, and Graham’s delivery intensifies before an underlying guitar melody swells and finally detonates into one of the most intense, sudden bursts of sound I have ever heard. Its thunderous roar is pure euphoria, a floating through the ceiling type moment, where you just lay back, close your eyes and feel your soul become entwined with the music, everything else fading away. In addition, lyrically, it functions as the emotional capstone of
It’s the Long Goodbye: a constant push and pull between the feelings of his mother’s illness, “Is it ok to feel this way?”, “It’s ok to feel this way” and “I don’t wanna feel this way”. If you want a textbook lesson in how to close out an album, this is it.
There’s just something in the water in Scotland. Maybe the weather, maybe the history, maybe the location, maybe the accent. It feels like a kind of musical sadness factory. Surely it isn’t a coincidence, right? That sense of pure despair that is felt is transformed into some of the purest expressions of raw emotion I have ever heard, The Twilight Sad standing chief among them. The album title
It’s the Long Goodbye refers to the slow process of watching a loved one be robbed of their body by dementia. I can’t imagine such a difficult state of being, standing there powerless to help. Through that kind of tragedy comes the need for release, and in this case, that release becomes music. That is the beauty of art. It’s an album whose memory is firmly planted in this world forever, and one that will haunt you long after it’s done.
