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THE TWILIGHT SAD...

IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME: THE TWILIGHT SAD (2019, Rock Action)

Prior to the introductory weeks of 2019, you could probably be forgiven for never having heard The Twilight Sad before. Despite gaining a cult-like following amongst fans the globe over for their fevered live shows, sinister lyrics and typically Scottish self-deprecation; they have until now remained largely unknown to the greater music community - their powers really only lauded by a small handful of zealots who were already devout to the religion. Their fifth album lands this week as a benchmark offering: as it rightfully claims it's place in the hands of excited newcomers, everyone who was privy to the group's existing magic knows that nothing from here forward is going to be quite the same.

Opening track "10 Good Reasons For Modern Drugs" immediately steals your attention like piercing sirens in the black of night. With a seductive call that I can only liken to a drug rapidly taking over your system, it sets the pace early; it's brazen guitars building a wall of noise that the song scales and then soars free from.

Any question as to whether we'd opened with our strongest hand is quickly put to bed, as "Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting" arrives like a frenzied murderer bludgeoning down the front door. Quite possibly the most complete song they have ever written, it has all the elements of a quintessential Twilight Sad live experience: jagged bursts of noise that threaten to capture your heart and mind, set against a hypnotic drum beat and solid repeating bassline. As James Graham's anguished howl accuses "I saw you kill him on the back stair"; the track staggers wildly to a conclusion as affecting as the title suggests - leaving you a breathless witness to it's frantic 3.5 minute manhunt, which swiftly claims all hostages.

"The Arbor” swirls a haunting, sombre melody around the insistent call of "Why did you leave in the night?" - it's yearning tone blanketing a propulsive tide that never recedes, the song's lure slowly dragging a drifting sailboat into seemingly ever more treacherous waters. For all of The Arbor's cautionary warning, "Sunday Day13" evokes a similar mood - but it surfaces from the murky, ghost-like depths of a ship that is already long wrecked. As the refrain "Please don't ever change your mind..." tugs softly at the secrets, doubts and regrets that we all hold privately inside of us, you cannot help but be moved by the vulnerability that has been left washed up onshore.

To call It Won/t Be Like This All The Time a special record still seems an injustice to the gargantuan amount of effort and emotion it cost to create. It is blatantly criminal to think that this collection of songs very nearly almost did not exist, as along with the album's predecessor, IWBLTATT faced varying delays and genuine doubts as to whether it would ever come to fruition. It's arrival in the world should be met with the joyous relief of a long and troubled labour, and then rightfully celebrated as the landmark piece of art which it truly is.

As harsh as it may seem, the best art always seems to be borne from personal anguish; a need to work through something that had the genuine ability to swallow it's maker whole. As the fifth chapter snapshots a moment in time for the band which they endured and then eventually freed themselves from, the future signals a promising new direction and a more attentive, wider audience. Those already on board will rejoice as the world finally wakes up to what they already knew: not only did The Twilight Sad always have this kind of life-affirming, monumental record in them, it is very likely that this is still only just the beginning.

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Easy, lucky, free.

There is a crow in the backyard. My kitten senses it before she sees it. Jumping off the bed, she pads with the quiet efficiency of a practiced killer to the sliding door at the back of the house. By the time I reluctantly pull myself from broken slumber and reach her, she is already staring back at me expectantly, waiting to be let outside.

There is a crow in the backyard on the morning I will say goodbye to you.

Wear colour, the notice says. Come in a shirt emblazoned with the name of your favourite band. Come in glitter or lycra, or a work uniform, or a pretty dress. You have pre-written the details about how you want this day to play out, having long known that it was rapidly approaching. As the cat mews impatiently, I can see the bird looking at me. It is an old soul, all glossed black feathers and weathered-glass eyes. It is also entirely unafraid. This animal will make short work of any domestic housecat, I know this much. A protective instinct washes over me, and I wonder if your mother felt this way when the diagnosis was delivered to you 18 months ago.

Deciding what to pull from the wardrobe has suddenly become a matter of critical importance. Life and death, you could say. I can’t decide what is appropriate… everything seems deeply wrong. What rules should you apply when making a decision like this? Will your family be affronted to see unironed jeans, and a hairstyle that suggests I just rolled out of bed? I glance at the alarm clock, the glow of traffic-light red numerals telling me that I am wasting time. 

The minutes become a procession, ticking by in an eternal ceaseless loop. This lip gloss, a tangerine-hued reminder of our first shopping trip to LUSH. You were well then - flirting with the boy behind the counter, your eyes effervescent and shining. I smear the colour on, annoyed by the banal regularity of the task. This cylinder of compressed wax and oil has the audacious nerve to act like it’s just another day.

Radio songs fill the car as I sit at the intersection. The windows are wound shut tight, whether I’ve done this to keep the noise in or the world out, I am largely unsure. The old man across the road is walking home, plastic bags weighted with some bread. A chocolate bar. Two litres of mik, full cream. By the age of 70, I suppose you care less.

It is both baffling and entirely understandable that I am able to congregate in this mass of your people, and barely know any of them. You were the star of the show, always, but had a soft spot for rank outsiders. I think of countless Saturday mornings when we would quietly browse the bookstore where you used to work. How I would go home and spend the night with new literary friends, whilst you would go out and drink with real ones. You never judged me for not wanting to tag along.

The place is full to bursting. Sliding doors are open, allowing the overflow of people to gather at the back behind relatives, and those who have either arrived early or deemed themselves of enough importance to take a seat. I’m staring at the wood above you through the dark of my sunglasses. It’s a deep brown, light reflecting off the lid.

I think again of how you have orchestrated this entire performance. The bands ringing out, the flowers resting above your bones. It seems fitting, to know that the event is occurring the way that you wanted. How many people get these decisions made for them? Most, I’m sure. 

Your smiling face is looking up at me from thick card usually reserved for wedding invitations. You are standing in front of a Christmas tree, with sparkling lights glowing behind you, a Tiffany pendant hanging from your pale and slender neck. The same pendant that is also draped around mine. Rewind a few years: “I don’t care for corporations”, you said, “but romance is timeless”. Oh, that look on the sales assistant’s face, when our dirty sneakers ascended the steps in King Street, and the suited door attendant caught her eye. We didn’t belong there, in that obscenely expensive jewellery store. We don’t belong here, either.

You spent 15 months being frontline-soldier brave, a stoic determination emanating from your chest as you remained matter of fact about the situation you were facing. “We’re all going to die”, you said to me pointedly. “I’m just doing it a little sooner than most”. I remember the night your defence finally folded: the invasion of the enemy now simply too great, like the cancer cells inside you. Your voice, broken and haggard, admitting the grotesque truth that you had struggled for so long to hold in: you were terrified. I didn’t know what to do, so I just looked at your stricken, ghost-white face, and lied with all the conviction I could summon: everything would be okay. You must have said that line to me one hundred thousand times. “Everything will be okay”. Fat tears ran rivers of designer mascara down your face, forming black streams through the thick layer of foundation you would stop bothering to apply the next day. A failing body crumpled in my arms. I knew you couldn’t fight anymore.

There is a line and I am in it, slowly approaching the wooden box where the flesh and bones which housed you now reside. Friends are comforting friends, but there is no-one beside me. There’s just you, hidden from view, and me, trying to stifle desperate gulps of breath as reality hits home. Conor Oberst is singing our favourite Bright Eyes song, and it’s frankly not helping. “Did it all get real, I guess it’s real enough”. You knew how to create a moment, always.

An instant later, I’m here, it’s my turn. I knew the moment was coming, but now that it’s arrived, I feel ill-equipped to deal with it. 15 years of the popular girl and the misfit, and we’re on the last page of our last chapter. My fingertips reach out and gently touch the unassuming panels of jarrah. I feel the fracture deep in the centre of my chest: I have to say goodbye to you. My sweet, beautiful friend. As I struggle to remain composed, I step back and grace the box with the peace sign, the same one we gave each other whenever we’d part ways. The ritual was well honed: 10 steps and we’d turn around, V-shaped index and middle fingers waving triumphantly in the air, stupid grins on our stupid faces. I forgot to do it once, early on, and you got so cross with me that we didn’t speak for a week - the longest we’d ever been absent from each other’s lives since meeting. You eventually phoned at 1am in a sulk to remind me in no uncertain terms of our agreement, demanding a full apology and angrily making me promise to never forget again.

As mourners console each other and make travel arrangements to reach the next venue, I’m walking outside, the sun hot on my skin. I am overcome with the knowledge that I am alive. I have every intention of skipping the after-party, crowds never were my thing. You knew that I wouldn’t go anyway - we always had an understanding.

Turning briefly, my fingers raise towards the sky one final time. I know you can’t see them now, but a promise is forever. And romance is timeless. One foot in front of the other, you are morphing into memories. You’re a Saturday morning espresso, you’re the radio song I turn up. You’re a tangerine dream, a silver pendant hanging. The earnest kitten which I shield from harm.

The last line of the story arrives, it having long ago written itself.

Everything will be okay.

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Music & memory.

  All the neighbours loved it, and couldn't help themselves from commenting when they walked past. It was a rose garden to rival any that a preened Victorian mansion could offer up. Tended carefully each day, full of cascading colour, and with the fragrance of hybrid teas and classic icebergs wafting down the stone path and out onto the street; it enchanted passers-by. I remember her there, letting me play with a yellow plastic spade and bucket, forever watchful of my constant attempts to veer close to the prickly thorns and sharp secateurs. From inside the house, an old Electrome Apollo turntable would rotate a battered copy of "Yellow Submarine", and it would ring out to us in the garden as we toiled in the sunshine. Carried away by music for as long as I can remember, it was The Beatles who first entered my head at a young age, and set me off down a path that will forever associate music with memory. My nanna was a woman who brimmed with life. Vibrant and effervescent, she could make anyone smile in seconds, just with her own kind way. When my brother and I would visit we would eagerly tumble up the back steps, and were always greeted with the scent of a banana cake baking in the oven, and The Fab Four calling out to us long before we could hear her voice. Dog-eared sepia photographs show me at the tender age of 6, dancing in front of the record player in Sesame Street shorts with an overgrown fringe, lost to the charms of tunes all the way from Liverpool. As I grew and discovered a love of melody all my own, it became increasingly apparent to me that anything worth remembering needed a soundtrack to help immortalize it. Music has always been a time machine. Can anything transport you so vividly back to a place you once were? Songs are vessels, ready to take you where you let them, be it to childhood, to a lover's touch, a vivid sunset or freezing winter. They can evoke senses that other mediums fail to, all with the press of a button or careful drop of the needle. A lady was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers on a summer afternoon in 1989, and a girl found her grandfather weeping to "Hey Bulldog" as the sun moved beyond the old asbestos fence and night began to draw in. Still a child, I didn't understand then how such a happy song could make someone so sad. As the years passed, the roses suffered, missing the sure hand and constant attention of their former gardener. A woman who once knew everything about me could not even remember her own name. Her exit was slow but inescapable, the sad reality of the disease making sure we felt her slip away from us in the most brutal way imaginable. Near the end, words were mostly gone, no longer able to convey meaning. As I gently pushed her wheelchair through the shaded hospital gardens, I began to softly sing the soundtrack of my youth; ruminating on all the stolen years and and wishing I could salvage some fragment of what had been cruelly taken from us. "If you're lonely, you can talk to me... you can talk to me." A bird chirped in song as the sun cracked through clouds, reflecting light off the pavement in sharp bright angles. For the first time in the longest age, she turned her head and looked at me. And she saw. She saw me, and I saw her, in a few brief seconds where a song had managed to cut through the deep recesses of her disease and bond us again. Our connection had found it's way through the void, magically re-established with my poorly pitched recital of one of The Beatles' throwaway tunes. 

In an instant she was gone, but I will forever be grateful for the last cognitive moment I had with her, delivered to me only because of what I already knew to be true. Music can take you places you have long since departed. There will forever be a scrapbook of the past for all of us in the songs that we know and love.