Music: The Twilight Sad and We Were Promised Jet Packs

The Twilight Sad is properly named. The Scottish trio of vocalist James Graham, guitarist Andy MacFarlane and drummer Mark Devine specializes in mood-altering music that ranges from hushed melancholia to swirling, rhythmically dynamic rave-ups.

Oct 22, 2014 at 1:52 pm
click to enlarge The Twilight Sad
The Twilight Sad

The Twilight Sad is properly named. The Scottish trio of vocalist James Graham, guitarist Andy MacFarlane and drummer Mark Devine specializes in mood-altering music that ranges from hushed melancholia to swirling, rhythmically dynamic rave-ups. The band's songs somehow come off simultaneously epic and intimate. It's as if their buddies Mogwai found a singer equal to the heightened atmospherics inherent in the immaculately crafted walls of sound in which each band gets lost — Graham's voice is a thing of beauty, plaintive one moment, operatic the next. 


The Twilight Sad's fourth full-length, Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave (due in the States Oct. 27), was recorded at Mogwai's Castle of Doom Studios in Glasgow, a place that no doubt influenced the chilly feeling one gets when immersed in the album's 10 songs. 

They play a free show on Thursday, Oct. 23, with We Were Promised Jetpacks at Bogart's in Corryville. Get more info and tickets here.