New(ish) Band Alert: The Twilight Sad

To make up for my no doubt agonising absence from your dreary lives, I thought I'd shock the shit out of you by posting twice in one night. The Twilight Sad are enjoying somewhat of a blogsplurge at the moment. It's not wonder really, with so many blogs vying to be the quickest to highlight anything new and vaguely good, any band showing potential and not receiving acclaim can very quickly gain a lot of critical inertia. The only risk I suppose is that blogland and blogreaders can be a little fickle, maybe even more fickle than the pre-blog indie world. Thus a few months back every man and his immaculately coiffured dog was positively ecstatic over the Belle & Sebs-lite that came out under the name of The Boy Least Likely To. Now that the initial excitement is over I kind of suspect that they wont be so warmly embraced come second-album time (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have certainly suffered from a bit of critical dropoff).

Now I don't usually post many negative reviews on here, usually preferring to be overly enthusiastic and load every post with so many superlatives that my grasp of the English language seems to usually just consist of the words ace, excellent, magnificent and incredible, but I thought that with this one I'd try to be a little more reflective. So The Twilight Sad certainly have a few very good things going for them. Hailing from Glasgow, they only formed a year or two ago, and for a debut release they've certainly crafted a fine album. There are some really nice things going on, and with singer James Graham they've got someone who's not afraid to use a regional accent (not that every accent isn't regional, but its nice to hear someone not pretending to be a cockerknee), and those little sparkles of accordion here and there are nice. The Sonic Youth/MBVish guitar drones are rather sweet too. However I'm not sure quite how good they really are, I seem to feel a slight critical disconnection that won't allow me to really like them as much as I feel I should. The aforementioned drone has been done a hundred times before (hiya My Vitriol, byebye My Vitriol....no really byebye.), accent wise we've had Arab Strap and The Weddoes and Maximo Park, and a tiny evil part of my heart keeps telling me that The Sad (Greg Dulli already has 'The Twilights' i'm afraid) are only a pedal or two away from Snow Patrol. Maybe the old Snow Patrol, but still...Snow Patrol.

Of course we can always hope that those sparks of specialness will develop and they'll become something really great by the time of their second album, and if so maybe the critical mifflers will like that one too. So, for the four of you who've yet to hear em, here's a song or two. Tomorrow? Back to superlatives! Enjoy.

The Twilight Sad - Walking For Two Hours
The Twilight Sad - And She Would Darken The Memory