Send "The Twilight Sad " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Brooder James Graham is not a great storyteller. His mission-- along with his band of post-Mogwai Scottish noisemakers-- is to evoke. When Graham repeated lines like, "the kids are on fire in the bedroom," and, "in my dreams I watch Emily dance," on the Twilight Sad's debut LP, 2007's Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, the specifics were left hauntingly up in the air. It's a tactic used by several of the singer's self-serious forebears-- from Joy Division's Ian Curtis to Interpol's Paul Banks-- but one step too far into the abstract and there's too little for listeners to hang their own shared dilemmas upon. With follow-up Forget the Night Ahead, Graham takes his cryptic musings into a pitch-black place, but he still connects enough to make all the fraught drama worthwhile-- especially when coupled with guitarist Andy MacFarlane's still-overwhelming Kevin Shields-by-way-of-Thurston Moore torrents.Since Fourteen Autumns contained many (albeit vague) references to a severely traumatic childhood, it often sounded like a form of coded primal scream therapy. The album cover showed a cartoon mother angrily waving her masked son away; the album's companion EP, Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did, showed the masked son suffocating the same mother with a pillow. With his mommy and daddy issues sufficiently exorcised, Graham moves onto more adult worries with Forget the Night Ahead-- there's still no summer or spring in Twilight Sad World, and the days are even shorter this time around. And there's no youthful spirit to balance out the dread, either, as it's allowed to run amok throughout the album's 11 punishing tracks. To wit, the closest thing resembling a love song, the roiling "Interrupted", is topped off by Graham murmuring, "you and I will bury them all." It will not be played at weddings. Funerals, maybe....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| After two years, a stopgap EP and a generous collection of b-sides and unreleased material, Scotland’s Twilight Sad have returned with a highly anticipated sophomore album that once again seeks to find the common ground among Arab Strap, My Bloody Valentine and life as a disaffected adolescent. For casual fans and onlookers, Forget the Night Ahead will be a satisfying listen that carries forward the momentum they’ve built since their self-titled EP in early 2006. James Graham’s easily identifiable Scottish burr is as thick as it’s ever been. The guitar noise and buried melodies are on prominent display. Mark Devine’s muscular drumming makes its presence known immediately. In short, you give it a listen or two and think everything’s in its right place. So, what’s the problem? Well, it started when the band promised that Forget the Night Ahead would be “noisier and bigger.” They weren’t kidding – it is colossal. Even for a band that shot for your heart when they weren’t shooting for your earplugs on Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, these 11 songs are an example of what happens when you try to outdo your first album by making the second one exactly the same, except with more everything. Devine’s creative drumming has never been buried in the mix, but opener “Reflection of the Television” exudes perfectly what this album is all about. Droning noise from god knows which one of Andy MacFarlane’s effects pedals creates the mood for Devine to enter with his pounding bass and toms. The song sounds huge before it ever kicks into full-on feedback holocaust-mode three minutes in. It’s a tremendously powerful piece of music, among the best in a steadily growing catalog, but the unholy roar that feels so special at the end of the song will be a distant memory by the time you’ve gotten to “At the Burnside” 45 minutes later....full text |
| Theskinny |
| The Twilight Sad have taken on a leaner, meaner look in time for the release of their hugely anticipated second album Forget The Night Ahead. Singer James Graham and guitarist/producer Andy MacFarlane have both shaved their heads, as if two-and-a-half years of wondering how the hell to follow up their magnificent debut album has left them both ready to escape to the same institution as Britney. Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters didn’t take the Twilight Sad into the charts, but it did elevate them into an exalted position in Scottish indie rock; reams of positive press across the Atlantic, where Graham’s local brogue earned him dodgy comparisons to Groundskeeper Willie, solidified an international indie reputation. And it came out of nowhere - three tiny gigs and a low-key EP release preceded the album, which had won rave reviews from Los Angeles to Melbourne before the Kilsyth band reached Edinburgh. Forget The Night Ahead isn’t coming out of nowhere. It’s following one of the most acclaimed Scottish albums of the young century; 30 months of touring the US, Europe and Britain in support of some pretty big bands (Smashing Pumpkins, Mogwai, Snow Patrol); and a couple of stop-gap EPs which weren’t all that satisfying. If second album syndrome really exists (and Wikipedia says it does), Forget The Night Ahead must be odds-on to show symptoms. You’ve already seen the rating above: its symptoms are mild....full text |
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