Words with The Twilight Sad
The Twilight Sad
At last month’s Great Escape in Brighton, we caught up with two of the finest live acts in the UK, let alone central Scotland, before they performed on the Levi’s OnesToWatch stage at Audio. After chatting to Dananananaykroyd, we spent some time with The Twilight Sad.
What’s in store for The Twilight Sad for the next few months?
James Graham: Well, the new record out mid-September. It’s recorded, just being mastered. We actually just got the artwork for it today. So it’s kind of all there, the track-listing was finally decided today as well.
Does the artwork have the same theme that your previous releases have had?
J: Like the music on the record it’s going to be familiar, but slightly different. We’re hoping to develop a theme across our albums with it. It looks brilliant, I actually like it more than the first one.
Whose idea was the Goo pastiche? (The Twilight Sad’s 2008 live compilation gets the title, Killed My Parents and Hit The Road , and its artwork from the 1990 Sonic Youth album)
J: That was Andy [MacFarlane, guitar]. We were playing in America with Mogwai, we’ve just finished supporting them out there, and Thurston Moore comes to the gig. So we were thinking ‘fuck’ and hoping he didn’t see the merchandise table. They haven’t sued us though. Yet.
You should keep it up then!
J: Aye, we might do The Beatles next [MG is wearing a Revolver t-shirt] or Pet Sounds. How many other people can we rip off? We are working our way through them all!
Any schedule for touring in the UK coming up?
J: Definitely, when the record’s out. We’ve got a small run of dates this month like Stag and Dagger and here obviously. We’ve also got Hop Farm in Kent this July.
There do seem to be more and more of these smaller urban festivals springing up of late.
J: Yeah, definitely for those that can’t get to the big festivals. That said the End of The Road festival, always a strong line up and is the best one we’ve been to so if they’re reading this. Book us! It would be great to play Glastonbury if we got the chance as well.
You got your first review via Teletext’s Planet Sound [former home of Muso's Guide's Editor, Natalie Shaw], how important a jumping off point was that?
J: I think it’s always nice if someone is saying something good about you. It wasn’t just the review itself; people were writing letters in to The Void as well. They turned a lot of people on to us. Especially as, growing up, we used to go on Planet Sound a lot. So what they did for us, giving us album of the year as well for our debut at such a well respected outlet.
I’ve heard that the new record is louder, darker, bigger….
J: … and better! It is all of those but it’s also more melodic as well.
Have you been working with Peter Katis again this time out?
J: A lot of the time, on the first record, people have said that Peter Katis produced it, but really Andy did and Peter Katis mixed it. Andy did the same on this one and Paul Savage (The Delgados) recorded it.
Because looking at the list of other bands that Katis has worked with like The National, Interpol and Mercury Rev on Deserter’s Songs and especially with that Mercury Rev album I’ve always been struck by the way that your songs build to a crescendo, albeit it a louder fashion, in a similar way.
J: Hmm, those are all brilliant bands. We felt on this record, I mean there’s no doubt about it we are proud of the first record, that we wanted to go for it and not get into the trap of being lazy and we thought with the same people we might have got comfortable and it can reflect on the album if you do get too comfortable. We wanted to keep some things the same but also some things different.
There does seem to be now with the higher emphasis on touring and so on, an element of pressure off bands slightly when they go into a second record that wasn’t the case maybe 10-15 years ago.
J: There was a suggestion that we should try and get the second album out very quickly after the first but we weren’t that keen on the idea. We needed a bit of time on it.
Most second albums benefit greatly from being tried out on the road. I think second time out; if you rush it, it does show.
J: We’ve been on the road a lot of the time, trying out new songs and new arrangements. We didn’t really get that with the first record because we recorded it after four gigs. When we were signed and went over to America, by the time we came back we had played more gigs in the US than in Glasgow. It was like a whirlwind.
On the recent compilation of live songs the cover versions, how did they come about?
J: That was really in order to fund the Mogwai tour and that was the way of doing it. The covers, at first we weren’t that into the idea of doing it but once we had we were really happy with the results. We all like the bands that we covered and we had done that Smiths’s cover [‘Half APerson’] a couple of times on the radio and that worked quite well. ’Twenty Four Hours’ we worked into the set after recording it and it was fun to play, although I had to keep taking the lyrics on stage.
So did the new recorded get influenced by those bands you covered at all, or has their been anything else that has channelled into the recording process?
J: Not really, I don’t think there’s been anything specific that has influenced this one that hasn’t always been a general influence. More than anything we try and avoid sounding like other bands in the studio.
So there’s a list of people you haven’t been influenced by?
J: Ha ha! Yeah, I think that’s more accurate.
So if someone realised a song was starting to sound a bit like <insert band name> it stopped.
J: Pretty much! (In the background Andy is playing the riff from Ocean Colour Scene’s ‘The Riverboat Song, badly’)
Can we expect that on the next live album?
J: It’s his solo project!
The whole of Moseley Shoals.
Andy: It’s going to be the whole of Oasis’s Be Here Now, acoustic though.
Much is made on Threatmantics use of the viola in place of a guitar, and rightly so. Whilst the instrument has seen a renaissance in recent years with the burgeoning London folk scene and the likes of Arcade Fire using one on stage, here it’s used in a slightly different manner by the band. Instead of being an additional part of their sound it’s very much centre stage. So while ‘Get Out of Town’ sounds like it could snugly fit on The Wicker Man OST elsewhere they sound more like Fairport Convention or Creedence Clearwater Revival playing in the same room as Physical Graffiti era Led Zeppelin. The heavier, thrasher feedback friendly nature of their side is played up heavily on stage and it’ll not surprise you to hear the occasional bit of Welsh might be slipped in.
Alessi’s Ark is the stage name of Alessi Laurent-Marke, whose debut album Notes from the Treehouse is due out next month and was recorded with the help of Mike Mogis (of Bright Eyes). Like the best pastoral folk music, Aleesi’s Ark seems to spend it’s time with a permanent sense of autumnal dusk. Augmented by Ohama’s finest strings, harps and brass which bring the best out of Laurent-Marke’s otherworldly songs, subject matter includes the weather, horses, kite-flying and freckles. There’s much to be enjoy here and plenty to look forward to with comparisons to a Cat Power fronted Thrills or even (though no less warranted) to Joanna Newsom or Syd Barrett’s wide-eyed, child like song writing being thrown up. She’ll be backed by members of Mumford and Sons this weekend.
One of the more surprising acts to qualify for this list, we were sure they’d be above the capacity for The Roundhouse. Whilst comparisons to Battles can and should be made, the majority of their numerically numbered songs include moments that bring to mind the electronic pulse of Holy Fuck as well as some much calmer post-rock interludes. Like and good live act they don’t thrive on volume alone, the tonal shifts and gaps between peaks and troughs are what make it all so thrilling. Might be worth earplugs if you are near a speaker, we wouldn’t want you to step out in front of a car on Camden High St now would we.
It’s reassuring to hear a band that has a fantastic, powerful vocalist who really does bring each and every song he sings up a level through sheer brute power. Not just by being loud either, there’s a sense of direction and unleashing it when appropriate. Mixed in with some sky-scrapping guitar work and cacophonous drums it adds to a thrilling prospect. Setting their sights on the Big Music of Echo and The Bunnymen and thrashing din of The Jesus and Mary Chain does them no harm and even in demo form a call to arms like ‘Middle of The Night’ begs to be ringing in the ears of as many punters as can be crammed it to hear it. Think White Lies but better.
It’s good to hear such a new band so in love with the sound of Young Scotland but not restricting themselves to solely aping Josef K and Orange Juice, recent EP Bred for Skills and Magic showcased not just a penchant for the styling of Postcard Record’s finest but throwing a dash of US indie in with nods to Pavement, particularly on ‘Bad Blood’, amongst others. They do the whole pared down; quiet introspectiveness as well as they do the choppy indie disco shuffle. One is tempted to point out that this is what early REM were so good at doing. Thankfully not really picked up in the crush to crown the next big thing at the start of the year, they’ve continued to tour hard in the first part of the year and we are eager to hear any new material they have to offer.
Your Twenties lead singer Gabriel Stebbing is currently best known as a sometime member of Metronomy, if his band’s forthcoming debut contains many more tunes like ‘Caught Wheel’ then that won’t be the case. Sounding like an electronic bubble fuelled 21st century take on a lost, blissed out Fleetwood Mac or even Crosby, Stills and Nash number if one can imagine such an aural treat. Other demos pride themselves in being catchy, hummable and full of swooning backing vocals as well as ringing, chiming guitar micro-riffs. Will be equally at home getting people to move their feet late at night or to have them wistfully dreaming of the warmer days just around the corner.
As winners of the NME Phillip Hall Radar award many words have been written on The Big Pink already. Following in the footsteps of Glasvegas, The Twang (No, really.), The Long Blondes, Kasier Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand it’s clear there will be plenty more. With the current folky flavour coming through in a many a new band taking their name from the title of The Band’s debut album may lead people to expect a certain sound from them. Well don’t. Instead they mix the processed, out of this world, woozy electronic pulses with the stoned, drone rock familiar to both of Jason Pierce’s bands and add in the sound of John Cale’s viola to (them again) The Jesus and Mary Chain’s early shoegaze template.
With the deluge of New York bands that sound like they are from Africa it’s only fair that we give the spotlight to a South African band that sound like they are from Brooklyn. The most thrilling thing about BLK JKS is that they don’t sound like the earnest elements of TV on the Radio’s output where they are striving to be considered as successors to Radiohead but more akin to the one those found on ‘Wolf Like Me’ The drums, the yelping multi-tracked vocals are only going to make you think of David Sitek and Tunde Adebimpe, but you can dance your arse as much as you can stroke your chin to it. They have just started their first UK tour but the loose tightness of the band on the Mystery EP from earlier this year can be put down to a decade of playing together. I realise that loose tightness is an oxymoron but the songs vary between arty sound colleges and close knit, rumbling, riff roller-coasters.) . On ‘Mystery’ they crash out like Purple Rain era Prince being backed by The Stone Roses’ Reni. The rhythm section is just as tight on their other songs fellow Manchester band The Smiths and on ‘It’s In Every Thing You See’ they bring to mind the gloomy hiss of Joy Division’s ‘The Eternal’ and the guitar guest work of Robert Fripp. Expect them to showcase material from their being worked on debut, After Robots which might sound more world music than Roxy Music in a live setting.
Named after the Underworld lyric from ‘Cowgirl’, Everything Everything dip their toes into so many genre rivers that twiddly art-rock disco doesn’t begin to do them justice. On demo ‘Weights’ they alternately sound like The Beach Boys hanging out at Studio 54 then The Futureheads via the more childlike rhymes of the Aphex Twin then The Beach Boys again via Daft Punk. On ‘Photoshop Handsome’ they mix a glorious new wave hooks full of video game references with post DFA guitar sunbursts. For anyone looking for a math-rock band who have heard some records this decade, sing like they mean it and allow you to move your feet (if you can lift them off the floor, it is Camden) this is the band for you. 
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