The Twilight Sad - Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did
[FatCat]

If King Creosote is indeed King of the Scottish music landscape, The Twilight Sad are his bleaker, less poppy crowned princes, rolling their ‘R’s’ over a temperamental landscape of rushing winds and angry clouds.

Re-recording some of the tracks from last year’s much-acclaimed Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, The Twilight Sad aren’t starting revolutions here, rather reworking their tracks from a different, equally impressive angle.

The songs here are not only peppered with Scottish identity, they are Scottishness incarnate. The unique mix of James Graham’s brawny vocal against building, rushing backgrounds makes for evocative and (not always comfortably) candid thumbnails of the bleakness and beauty of human experience.

The lack of percussion in ‘Cold Days From The Birdhouse’, creates an intrepid air of suspense while ‘Walking For Two Hours’ and the newly featured, orchestra accompanied title track show a slightly more upbeat, twinkly accordion laced departure from their neighbours.

Considering the gentle tempo here, it is perhaps not surprising to encounter a Daniel Johnston cover in the form of ‘Some Things Last A Long Time’, which the band revitalise with their own wistful, percussion shunning, prolonged woodwind and accordion melodies.

This honed, bite sized collection makes robust promises for the band’s all-important second album, which will hopefully see a continuation of The Twilight Sad’s proudly identity-infused, self-prescribed pace.

Tracklisting:

1. And She Would Darken The Memory
2. Cold Days From The Birdhouse
3. Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did.
4. Mapped By What Surrounded Them
5. Walking For Two Hours
6. Some Things Last A Long Time