Subtlety isn’t The Twilight Sad’s strong suit -- or, at the very least, it didn’t seem to be. The Scottish group’s 2007 full-length debut, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, was widely feted by shoegaze enthusiasts who found Asobi Seksu too boring (good call) or Deerhunter too fucking weird (your loss). Beyond the somewhat pretty instrumentals (bolstered, no doubt, by producer Max Richter’s touch), however, was little more than misplaced nu-teenage angst delivered fresh from the oven by belter James Graham. Graham’s histrionics and over-emoting was the iceberg that sank the already teetering ship that was Fifteen Winters, but Richter’s sonically fussy (in a good way) production almost prevented the disaster from occurring.
On the outset, then, it doesn’t make much sense that the Sad would swap Richter for Iain Cook (of the recently disbanded Aereogramme) for production duties on their latest EP, Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards, It Did, which contains reworked tunes from their debut. Venture past the liner notes and credits, though, and find a new Twilight Sad, concerned less with howling and sobbing and more with bristling tension and complexity. Opening track “And She Would Darken the Memory” immediately proves as much, as gorgeous strings and glockenspiel replace the original track’s blustery bombast, while the restructuring of previous snoozer “Walking For Two Hours” swells and swoons with oncoming drums, wheezing organ, and a true sense of Glaswegian melodrama.
More urgently noticeable is the maturation of Graham’s voice; Here, It Never Snowed reveals folding layers of melody and searing anger in his pipes. Gone is the unfettered screaming and post-pre-post adolescent bullshit, replaced by a sense of real emotion and restraint. Instead of stumbling through verses and melodies, Graham now hangs on to every syllable and note as if it were his last, a tactic well-suited for his now-gorgeous tenor (as well as their cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Some Things Last a Hard Time,” which, considering the amount of times it’s been covered recently, looks to be taking over the spot last held by John Cale’s “Hallelujah”).
Despite all odds, The Twilight Sad have made a record that is equal parts moving and stately, without becoming ridiculous (something these guys have been guilty of before) or wooden (unlikely). Maybe they’ll be able to pull this off again later in their career; considering Great Britain’s track record with rock bands, however, let’s hedge our bets and doubt them until proven otherwise.
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