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.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2014.
