Review Summary: you are one cheeky wee shite
Throughout their career, Twin Atlantic have never been able to shake off a persistent identity crisis. This limbo, as unfortunate as it sounds, isn’t all bad: in fact, it has been quite enjoyable for the most part. Besides an early-2010’s phase where choruses just got bigger and bigger, there has never been a clear trajectory for the band’s music. 2016’s
GLA? Chunky riffs and chunky vocals. 2020’s
Power? No riffs and no-impact vocals. Now, two years after their blandest record and down yet another member, the Scots return with
Transparency. As always, it’s not exactly
progressing the Twin Atlantic sound (whatever that may be) in any particular direction, but it does achieve some
progress in terms of the overall quality of the group’s music.
Transparency retains many of the indie pop stylings of
Power while implementing an actual pulse (nice!). Melodies appear to serve a purpose again, even if that purpose ends up doing nothing more than saving tracks from the unforgivable depths of
boringness. While ‘Young’ adds approximately nothing to any musical landscape, its pleasant bounciness is more than enough to make for a highly enjoyable cut. Similarly, ‘Bang on the Gong’ implements some questionable artistic choices, but thrives off this very weirdness. Its grooves feel counterintuitive; its lyrics atrociously intriguing and intriguingly atrocious: “
More champagne? / Write your letter in cocaine! / Solid choice! / Glasgow or Detroit? / Overpriced”. While every song shares a similarly glossy production style, the record flows rather awkwardly. Yet, this hardly presents a major issue: many songs appear
intentionally awkward enough to prevent clumsiness from being a problem. Look no further than ‘It’s Getting Dark’; a piano ballad that excellently builds up to what could and perhaps should have been a guitar-infused climax… before simply ending and flowing into the highly danceable closing cut ‘Instigator’. It’s not even surprising, disappointing, or detracting from the record’s quality: it simply is what it is.
Occasionally,
Transparency’s vaguely bland weirdness pays off. ‘One Man Party’ is an absolute banger, embracing oddball melodies and a ridiculous(ly fun) chorus to achieve its strangely satisfying atmosphere. Naturally, Sam McTrusty’s lyrics make approximately no sense, but who cares about
what is being said when it’s being said in a thicc Glaswegian accent? “
Block your ace living on beaches / Georgia without no peaches / Content, content for rent”? Yeah, totally agreed dude. Simply put,
Transparency is a weird little record that makes strange choices without any apparent ambitions, but that’s fine. It’s pleasant enough while it’s on, and that seems to be all we can ask for from Twin Atlantic in 2022.
