Scotland has long produced epic tragedy in spades, a resigned but sorrowful acceptance of the whims of fate that come from the windswept moors. This goes back to Romans staring out over Hadrian’s Wall (or its fictional equivalent, John Snow staring out over The Wall), but most recently it’s come up in Scottish label FatCat and its hometown acts like The Twilight Sad, who further their growth by combining their softer & louder sides with Nobody Wants To Be Here and Nobody Wants To Leave.
In addition to their penchant for long and/or depressing album titles, The Twilight Sad also retain their tragic loss with Nobody. However, they manage to mix the more stripped down nature of their last record, No One Can Ever Know (QRO review), with the more epic sounds of their earlier work. This can exhibit itself in the more traditional quiet-into-loud, like on “Leave the House”, but also in making the epic sound personal, such as with the very evocative “I Could Give You All That You Don’t Want”.
The Twilight Sad are always going to have certain similarities with other tragic Scottish FatCat artists like Frightened Rabbit (QRO live review) and We Were Promised Jetpacks (QRO live review), but that’s the nature of Scotland, and The Twilight Sad are building upon it.
