The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know

23 January 2012

There is something about the cover art for the new Twilight Sad [Facebook/Twitter] record that is disturbing. Even for a band who deal in almost exclusively dark imagery, the eye-catching sleeve for No One Can Ever Know is a whole other level of scary. Its intrigue is increased when paired with the album’s title. The phrase ‘no one can ever know’ hints at dark secrets, deeds committed in the dead of night that must never be spoken of. It’s just the kind of thing you’d expect them to call an album, in fact, but their third album is about the furthest thing from a ‘typical’ Twilight Sad release as it is possible to get – and it might just be their best one yet.

I realise I’ve just put my head above the parapet, but bear with me, because I’ve been living with this album for the best part of six weeks at this stage, and I am not making that statement lightly. In my preview piece last month, I likened the album’s sound to the peaks of the careers of Nine Inch Nails and Manic Street Preachers: The Downward Spiral and The Holy Bible, and since then, my initial reaction’s proved correct; it has the cold production of the former and the hooks of the latter, but this is no mere homage. It’s still very much The Twilight Sad, and it couldn’t really be anyone else.

Thanks for this must go, at least in part, to James Graham’s lyrics, which are a paradox of cryptic imagery and detailed scenarios, leaving the listener to fill in the blanks; it’s like he’s an artist who produces a complex sketch but deliberately leaves it at that, and the viewer is left to imagine what else might be. Just one example of this is album opener Alphabet, where, over relentless drumming and a soaring synth line, he captures the desperation of a relationship (I say relationship, but this is my own reading of the lyrics, and they are open-ended enough for any number of meanings to be discerned from them): ‘So sick to death of the sight of you now / Safe to say I never wanted you more.’

Having set out its stall, No One Can Ever Know immediately becomes more intense. The bass riff on Dead City is downright evil, and the song itself is six-and-a-half minutes of the band at their most claustrophobia-inducing. Even when the chorus hits and the song shifts to a major key, it’s only a brief respite, and after the second chorus, anchored by that riff, the song builds to a stunning climax, establishing itself as perhaps the darkest thing the band have ever done – though it’s given a run for its money by album closer Kill It In the Morning, which is driven by yet more menacing bass, and has the most impressive finish on the entire album.

The singles chosen from the record so far are arguably the most accessible songs on it: Sick is reminiscent of The Antlers, albeit with more electronics and a vocalist with a Scottish accent, while the propulsive rhythm section on Another Bed (not to mention a huge chorus) make the song immediately arresting, masking the fact that Graham’s lyrics are at their most menacing, loaded with ominous threat: ‘You’re breaking your back in the new low / I’ll find you, don’t worry.’

The album is nine songs long, and doesn’t mess about, each one of them composed to the highest standard, and containing at least one moment that is shiver-inducing. There are multiple layers to these tracks, too: in that respect, the new record is business as usual for The Twilight Sad. In most others, however (I can’t honestly say I thought they had a song like Nil in them), it’s something new, brave and completely brilliant. They always make an effort to experiment with their sound on each album, and they’ve pushed themselves so much that they’re almost like a totally different band now. They say change is good, but rarely is change anywhere near as good as this.

No One Can Ever Know is released on February 6th through FatCat Records.
[PRE-ORDER] The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know @ FatCat | Amazon

Another Bed

Sick

Kill It In the Morning

Django Django – Django Django

By: Carrow

17 January 2012

In: News & Leaks, Reviews

0 comments

Django Django - Django Django

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and this maxim would seem to be the reason for the existence of a band like Django Django, boldly going where few of their contemporaries would dare, making the kind of joyful music that fully deserves all the acclaim it gets. It’s taken them two-and-a-half years for them to get to where they are now: on the cusp of releasing what is, hands-down, the most inventive British debut in quite some time. The music the quartet makes is not the kind that defies description, not ‘weird’ for its own sake, yet it is suitably eccentric for a band who can put themselves behind a record whose cover art can succinctly be described as bizarre.

However, it’s also rather colourful, and as such does a good job of describing the album’s contents. The twelve songs that make up the London-based band’s debut all strive to make an impression, one way or another. Their debut contains such a mixture of sounds that, on the whole, it shouldn’t work as an album. Instead, a record like this should be all over the place, and in the hands of a less talented group of individuals, this would no doubt be the case. In the hands of Django Django, though, their diverse approach to music is what makes their debut so cohesive, not to mention addictive.

It’s pretty ambitious, too, a testament to their songwriting skills. Not many bands would choose a song like the two-part, six-minute Hail Bop to open their debut album, but Django Django laugh in the face of convention, producing one of the finest album openers I’ve heard in quite some time. From there, the album goes straight into breathtaking recent single Default without so much as a pause. By the time the album gets to its third track, a distinct impression is created that nothing is beyond the band. This is an album that takes a whole lot of risks (as songs like Waveforms and Zumm Zumm attest to), and I’m delighted to report that every single one of them pays off.

The band’s earlier material makes up the bulk of the middle section of the album, and works very well indeed in context. There are few who would argue that a song as good as WOR would struggle to be a highlight on an album like this. It’s still up there as one of the band’s finest moments, flanked by Love’s Dart and Storm either side but losing absolutely none of its power. The sole new song around this point of the album is the acoustic-guitar led Hand of Man, which faces stiff competition but rises to the challenge admirably.

The appropriately summery Life’s a Beach opens the album’s final third, before the intense penultimate track Skies Over Cairo makes way for Silver Rays, one of the many songs on the album on which their inventive approach to rhythm shines through, and the staggering potential of the band to develop is made clear. They’ve produced an astonishing debut album, one that is nakedly accessible yet not afraid to push boundaries. Some will call it a ‘pop’ album, but Django Django’s debut defies easy classification. It’s a lot to take in, but there isn’t a single missed opportunity on it – they’re clearly making the most of what they’ve got.

Django Django’s self-titled debut is released on January 30th through Because Music.
[PRE-ORDER] Django Django – S/T @ Amazon | iTunes

Default

Waveforms

WOR

First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar

By: Carrow

13 January 2012

In: News & Leaks, Reviews

2 comments

First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar
I’d like to think I have a fairly broad music taste. (I am a music critic after all, give me some credit please!) However, one of the genres I cannot stand and do not have any time for is so-called ‘country’ music. It’s the perfect example of a stagnant genre: tired in every way, musically and lyrically. The idea of ‘heartbreak’ in a country song has hung around for so long that it’s long since moved past being cliché. This is why, when I read about First Aid kit’s second album being ‘country-tinged’, I had to stop and check if I was fine with that. Turns out I was; I’d loved their debut album, 2010′s The Big Black and the Blue, so I figured nothing bad could come out of such a description.

How right I was. The idea of something being ‘country-tinged’ puts most people on their guard anyway, but regardless of its influences, it is unquestionably a contender for most beautiful album of 2012, and we’re scarcely two weeks in. The fact that it namechecks some genuinely great country songwriters on second track Emmylou (named for Emmylou Harris and referencing Judith ‘Juice’ Newton, Gram Parsons and Johnny Cash) as well as having that song touch on all the staples of a country song right down to the use of a damned slide guitar doesn’t take anything away from it. It’s one of the high points on a record that is truly special.

Kicking off with the title track, a five-minute journey that does a very good job of summing up what the album is about, its windswept arrangement and jaw-dropping climax signalling that it is only the tip of the iceberg – seriously, that was a brave move; if I had been sequencing this record I would have suggested they close with it, because with most other bands it would be extremely difficult to follow - The Lion’s Roar is filled with naked honesty and intimacy, and it’s quite an impressive feat for an album like this to sound intimate even when it is at its most raucous, like on the joyful (actual) closer King of the World, which contains my favourite set of lyrics from the year so far: ‘I’ve seen everything I ever want to see / Screaming “FIRE!” in a theatre of people taking their seats’.

Its massively uplifting finale is a well-deserved payoff after an album that deals with plenty of darkness. Blue matches an optimistic, xylophone-featuring melody with a set of despairing lyrics, telling the story of someone who has given up on love and life, and who sees ‘a stranger in the mirror’: ‘The only man you ever loved, who you thought was gonna marry you, died in a car accident when he was only 22; then you just decided love wasn’t for you, and every year since then, that’s proven to be true.’ Such sentiments are already hard-hitting enough, but the harmonies that Johanna and Klara Söderberg employ to express them increase their impact ten-fold.

Those harmonies. I don’t want to say they’re the band’s defining feature, because The Lion’s Roar is musically accomplished enough to draw attention away from the sisters’ voices, but every so often – actually, scratch that, there’s a ‘moment’ in every song – you’re reminded just how much of a difference they make, such as on sprawling album centrepiece To A Poet (which I think should be a single at some point; it’s certainly immediate enough), and penultimate track New Year’s Eve - which is also the point at which optimism begins to make itself known on the album, leading wonderfully into the aforementioned King of the World and bringing the album to an extremely satisfying finish.

First Aid Kit’s second album is magnificent. Again, far be it from me to suggest that it leaves their debut in the shade – The Big Black and the Blue still holds up very well, even two years on – but they’ve come on so much since then that it’s hard not to feel that way at times. It relies on contrast and is quite a dark album, despite what it sounds like, but there is beauty to be found in every moment. At 21 and 18 years of age, respectively, Johanna and Klara are still young, but have produced something that displays wisdom and talent far beyond their years.

The Lion’s Roar is released on January 23rd through Wichita.
[PRE-ORDER] First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar @ Wichita | iTunes | Amazon