#All absolutely facetious but that's what's so funny because Nines is absolutely not at all sweet and warm and etc etc

[lesbianwyllravengard]

This shit but Gavin gets it for Hank

[ofviclentdelights]

“ YOU GOT A TASTE FOR BLOOD WHEN YOU WERE LICKING YOUR OWN WOUNDS. ” is that DAVID CASTAÑEDA? oh no, that’s ANTONIO REYES, born on the 5TH of APRIL, 2014. i heard HE/HIM (CIS MAN) is a SOLDIER in WYOMING MILITIA. apparently, they can be LOYAL and RESOURCEFUL but also known to be FACETIOUS and RUTHLESS. spends most of their free time BETTING ON PIT FIGHTS, probably smells like WHISKEY. is that a bite mark i see?

Age: Twenty-nine Orientation: Bisexual & biromantic Immunity: Immune & aware of it & not open about it Moral Alignment: Chaotic Stupid Evil Loyalty: Grizzlies, specifically Yen

you are only a small child and feel afraid.

Antonio was born the second child to the Reyes family in the unfortunate year of 2014, leaving him too young to ever know what “normal” was. Still, his early childhood was marked by his mother trying her best to let him be a kid for as long as he could be despite the disapproval from his father and older brother who was subjected to learning harsh survival tactics. The difference in treatment left a rift between the boys that would only continue as the years rolled by.

He was only ten years old when his parents were attacked by infected and died. It’s hazy to him, but he heard some of it before his brother dragged him away to safety. He knew they died protecting him and his brother, and that his brother largely blamed Antonio for it -- he was the one the cried when he was first taught how to hunt and usually hid behind his mom after all. Despite this, his brother felt responsible for him and didn’t abandon him, instead opting to teach him how to take care of himself and toughen up. 

Three miserable years full of grueling survival lessons passed without anyone to hold his hand. His relationship with his brother never improved despite the two having no one else to lean on. 

Still fairly young, he could potentially survive on his own if absolutely necessary -- which he wrongly assumed wouldn’t happen for quite some time. He was bit on his ankle while scavenging for supplies and unsure of what to do, he confided in his brother. The obvious solution was to shoot Antonio before he turned -- an outcome that sounded just as horrifying as turning to Antonio so he tried to run off. Still feeling a sense of responsibility for Antonio, his brother took off after him to put an end to things and in a desperate act of self-preservation, Antonio made sure he shot his older brother before he could shoot him. Though consumed with guilt from the added blood on his hands, he knew he had to carry on if he didn’t want to die (assuming he wouldn’t turn).

A few months passed of him on his own (waiting to see if he’d turn and being surprised when he didn’t) until he stumbled upon a small group of survivors. He lied to them and told them that he got separated from his last group and no one seemed to question it -- he was still just a kid after all and why would he lie? He was accepted in quickly and made himself fairly useful, though he purposefully made it seem like he still needed a little guidance in fending for himself against any kind of attack.

Throughout his four years with this new group, he discovered they had a knack for pissing other groups off, meaning human threats were a very real thing now. The group was attacked by another unaffiliated group and through a mixture of luck, skill, and being severely underestimated, Antonio was the last one standing -- the people who became like family to him were nothing more than lifeless corpses now.

Unsure of what the world would throw at him next, he didn’t allow himself any time to process or grieve what just happened. A few moments later a member of the Wyoming Militia stumbled upon the bloodied teenager rummaging through the deceased belongings. It was obvious he had been in the middle of whatever happened and after a brief conversation, he was offered a place in a new group due to his potential. With nothing else to do or anywhere to go, he accepted.

Antonio has been with the Grizzlies ever since, thriving in the violent environment.

what doesn’t kill you gives you a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms & a really dark sense of humor.

On the surface level Antonio is a thrill-seeking, borderline overconfident person who can’t take much seriously these days. He still carries some guilt around from what happened to his family, but it’s hidden under layers and layers of humor and dumbass comments.

His sense of humor is mostly sarcastic. Honestly conversations with him are like being a poor NPC that has to deal with the player selecting the sarcastic/smartass dialogue option almost every single time.

Should really stop betting on pit fights because jesus christ he’s not good at it. But honestly, he leans more on the impulsive side so it probably won’t happen anytime soon.

Speaking of pit fights, the ones with people versus infected freaked him out when he first joined the Grizzlies and to this day he still tries to avoid those or ends up blackout drunk at them because he may not have seen his parents die, but he definitely heard some of it and being exposed to similar noises is not a good time.

Though his joking attitude may not make him come across as a serious threat, he’s been with the Grizzlies for over a decade now and is extremely brutal and efficient while doing tasks for them.

Would 100% try to squeeze in a pun before killing someone. Very “But I think -- if you’re gonna kill a bunch of people -- you might as well...have some fun with it.”

Super loyal, though he’s more loyal to individuals than he is to groups and organizations.

Claims to not get attached to people because “you can only count on them to die” but would get attached to anyone that showed him a crumble of genuine care/affection.  

quote from man stabbed “what are you gonna do, stab me?”

CONNECTION 01: PERSON HE OWES A GAMBLING DEBT TO (01, Wyoming Militia) Betting on pit fights and almost anything else is all fun and games for Antonio meaning he’s prone to rack up quite the debt. He owes this a fair share of favor, rare trades, etc. I’m flexible on whether this person doesn’t take the debt too seriously, if they absolutely expect repayment, or if they’re somewhere in between.

CONNECTION 02: RIDE OR DIE/PARTNER IN CRIME (01, Wyoming Militia only) This person and Antonio make a brutal and efficient pair when taking care of tasks together. It’s more than just working well together though, they have a strong bond making this person someone Antonio would willingly risk his life for and follow to hell and back. They’re also one of the few people that can get semi-serious responses from Antonio.

CONNECTION 03: FORMER MENTOR (01, Wyoming Militia) This is the person who found him and offered him a spot in the Wyoming Militia. After he accepted, they took it upon themselves to sort of look out for him and teach him anything that would make him useful enough to keep around.

CONNECTION 04: SOMEONE WHO SEES A BIT THROUGH HIS FACADE (01, probably Wyoming Militia) Honestly just think this will be kinda funny because Antonio will finally be the one annoyed with someone. Also I apologize in advance because Antonio will be incredibly petty and childish in his defensiveness about this.

I’m sincerely open to anything you want to throw at me: exes, hateships, friendships, found family, enemies, frenemies, whatever I’m down for it all!

[cdyssey]

Worries

Summary: After the events of "The Hike," Moira sits Johnny down for a talk in the motel room.

Notes: Over the Christmas break, I binged the entirety of Schitt's Creek and fell so much in love with Johnny and Moira that I wanted to write fanfiction for the first time in a year, so here we are. :')

AO3

—

His hair still dripping with the vestiges of his shower, Johnny Rose, clad in his favorite white bathrobe, re-enters the motel room to a familiar trifecta awaiting him on his bed: Moira Rose, her carefully arched brow, and her well-manicured hand placed on the comforter in such a way that her implicit demand is all but spoken: Come here.

“Am I in trouble, Mrs. Rose?” He asks wryly, obediently shuffling to her side. His back is still somewhat stiff from sitting in a waiting room one half of the day and a wheelchair the other, so he’s a little awkward as he lowers himself next to her, trying not to bend in an unpleasant way.

If his wife notices—and he knows that she notices—she only responds with a slight dip in her expression, subtle, but unmistakable for what it is: concern.

Care.

Love.

Sometimes, it positively breaks his heart—how tender his dearest can be.

“Do not am I in trouble me, Mr. Rose,” Moira scolds even as she immediately snakes her arm around his own. “You know the answer to that tonight unless those lovely little pills that the physician prescribed have already affected your presence of mind.”

Instinctively, quite waggishly, he raises a bushy brow. 

“You’ve seen me in an altered state before, Moira.”

“A time or twenty nine, yes, of course. You become delightfully Shakespearean with your wordplay; it is irresistibly attractive.”

“So,” he finishes, a gentle smile on his lips, “given that I’m not regaling you with new vocabulary, you know I’m perfectly here right now.” 

Here in mind.

Here in body.

Here in soul.

Here with her for another tomorrow and another and another in the confoundingly, paradoxically beautiful Schitt’s Creek.

Moira’s gaze softens, melting in all of her skeptical places, and very slowly, very carefully, she leans her head against his shoulder. The familiar scent of her wreathes him—something floral but indescribable, as though she has just stepped out of an exotic Parisian greenhouse. It is the sweetest perfume he has ever known.

“I know that, John, dear,” she sighs heavily. “I do. I do. I was simply... I mean, I suppose I was just besides myself today under the duress of possibly losing you.” Her plump lips tremble in the way he knows she’s trying her best not to cry. “You were so pale and so drawn and so terribly small, and the last time I saw you possessing any of these qualities in spades was when I was giving birth to Alexis.”

“Funny. I don’t recall you being lucid enough to recall Alexis’s birth.”

“John!” Lifting her head from his shoulder, Moira bats his arm indignantly. “I am not being a wisecrack.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles as she leans against him again. As a peace offering, he briefly presses his lips against her forehead, and in return, one of her hands reaches over to his right wrist, which is still encircled with the patient bracelet from Elmdale Hospital.

She twists it counterclockwise so that she can better view his name. He had forgotten to cut it off before taking a shower.

“Moira”—he glances down at the tiny, printed number which marks him as seventy-three years old—“I’m fine now. You know that, right?”

That piercing blue gaze of hers moves from the bracelet to his own eyes, and it is clear that she is searching him for the veracity of his words—though he imagines that she won’t be able to find the fault that her paranoia tends to dread.

Lying to her has never been his desire nor forte.

“I know that,” she concedes with a tentative smile. “I simply adore you, sweetheart—endlessly—and so when it comes to you, my worries work ahead of my sensibilities. My head, prodigious though it normally is, lags behind my heart, my fears, and all of these feelings in my chest.”

“Is there any way I can assuage those worries, dear?”

“I have a list approximately thirty-two items long.”

Johnny reflexively laughs, and his wife reflexively bats him again, but the parentheses framing her eyes are wrinkled in the beginnings of amusement all the same.

“Start with your first five,” he replies, “and then we’ll go from there.”

“One”—by this point, Moira has worked her thumb beneath his bracelet, lifting it off of his wrist with a disdainful expression—“you go into the bathroom as soon as we are done conversing and cut this dreadful reminder of our past loose from your life! It is ugly and unbefitting, and I much prefer your Rolex.”

She withdraws her thumb from his wrist in the same moment that he nods amicably. 

“I can do that. Hospital bracelets are so out of vogue anyway.”

She smiles at him, eyes twinkling.

“Deuxième, dearest, you must assure me that you will strictly follow the physician's orders to scale back on potentially inflammatory food items. No more cinnamon rolls every morning or late night runs to the café for a milkshake.”

“I’ve never gone on—“ He starts indignantly (and guiltily), but he’s just as immediately cut off.

“Shush!” She places her index finger on his lips. “I know you haven’t been going to the apothecary for lip balm once a week. Your lips are perfectly, delectably moist, and David would have already complained about your constant presence in the store were your insinuations true.”

Another reason he doesn’t lie to Moira Rose.

She unfailingly sniffs him out when he does.

“Fine, fine,” he sighs placatingly. “No more milkshake runs.”

“Or daily cinnamon rolls,” she says pointedly.

“Or daily cinnamon rolls,” he parrots back with an eye roll. And now it’s Moira’s turn to laugh in that rich, throaty way of hers; she squeezes his hand warmly, and without thinking, he squeezes back.

“Tres, you must tell me that you love me at least three times a day from this point onwards, so that if you do suddenly kick the proverbial bucket after sampling Twyla’s meatloaf special one day, I can always reflect to our children, friends, and sundry admirers that the last thing that you told me was that you loved me.”

Johnny stares at her incredulously.

“Aren’t you being just a little facetious now?”

And, because Moira Rose can give an incredulous look just as well as she can receive one, she offers one right back.

“Hardly not, John! I am just covering all of our necessary bases in the advent of your untimely demise.”

“Thanks,” he mutters.

“You are very welcome!” 

She either didn’t catch the sarcasm or absolutely did and is actively choosing to ignore it—he isn't sure which of the two options is worse.

“Quattuor,” she murmurs next, and this time, Johnny can detect a new seriousness in his wife’s voice. She skims her thumb up and down the length of his gnarled hand and avoids looking him in the eye. “And this one is important, Mr. Rose, so please pay me the utmost attention... but I would desire it very much if you would be vigilant about informing me of your—ah—conditions from now on.”

She glances at him then, her expression uncharacteristically, alarmingly bashful.

“Honey...” He tries, but she brings her head off his shoulder to shake it sadly.

“You were lifting paraphernalia for me this morning when you strained yourself, and you said nary a word until you almost passed out on the dirty floor.” Moira’s thick lashes flutter with a rapidity that isn’t quite natural, and when she looks away, she swipes what he knows she imagines to be a surreptitious hand across her eyes. “I cannot name the emotion that such a sequence of events made me feel because my former therapist, Dr. London Aubergine, advised me to refrain from giving my negative emotions a voice... but, John, I—“ 

She stops suddenly, her breath hitching, but Johnny doesn’t need to hear another word to understand the gist of what she is saying. With a slow deliberation that is a message in and of itself, he gently cups his hand against Moira’s cheek to command her attention, and, with the faintest of sighs, she leans into his touch.

“There, there, sweetheart,” he says. “If it wasn’t moving all the furniture today, maybe it would have been cleaning the windows tomorrow or changing sheets the day after that. What happened today—and again, let me remind you that I’m okay now—wasn’t your fault.”

“As if you would tell me if it were, though!” She whines accusingly, tilting her head away from his hand.

The sudden recoil gives him whiplash; he instantly misses the warmth of her cheek against his palm.

“I don’t like for you to have to worry!”

“But, John, I want to worry for you. Nay, I demand the right to worry for you!” Her fingernails, sharp and black, fortified by acrylic and long, are beginning to dig into the hand that she is holding. “I love you beyond reason, and I know that can occasionally be overwhelming—goodness knows I can overreact—but I would rather overreact than understate you in a potential crisis. So, please, if you want to regard my feelings, tell me your truth and nothing but your truth.”

Moira takes a deep breath, but her grip on him doesn’t quite relax in the same way.

“I am a nine times shortlisted Daytime Emmy candidate, Mr. Rose." She draws herself to full height where she sits, her shoulders regally postured. "I can handle it—I assure you.”

It's hard to argue with her when she puts it like that in exactly those terms.

His dark eyes crinkle.

“C’mere,” Johnny says, finally extracting his hand from hers so he can pull her into a fuller embrace. He wraps his arms around her back, all tenderness, as she rest her chin in the crook of his neck. He can feel the tattoo of her heart beating rhythmically next to his chest, each thud an elegant melody he doesn't mind hearing again and again. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel this way, Moira. I’ve just never had much practice with, well, talking about my problems at great length. I can be prideful like that, you know—stubborn.”

“Oh, I know that—trust me, dear. You are fifty percent of the children’s psychological complexes.”

Though he knows she can’t see it, he levels her a dirty look.

“Who’s being the wisecrack now?”

“Sorry, darling! Force of habit.”

“But... seriously, Moira,” he continues, beginning to rub circles into the back of her pajama vest, “I’ll do better on that—on telling you things, okay?” A pause.

A beat.

Her heart continues to beat, and his does, too, the smallest reminders of their shared vivacity.

“Okay,” she breathes back, the low affirmation tickling his ear. He doesn’t have enough time to process how that makes him feel before she disentangles herself from him once again, a small smile pressed upon her lips.

“And now, a hearty Italian cinque to finish us off. For my fifth item, John, I would like you to kiss me now as though we have never kissed before, but also as though we have been kissing all of our lives.” She raises a suggestive brow. “It is a fine line between these polarized extremes. Are you up for the challenge?”

With a loud laugh, he does not quite respond to this particular inquiry with words.

[joneswilliam72]

The 405 Meets: The Twilight Sad's James Graham

It’s always slightly jarring when a heritage artist releases a capital-G Great record. There’s the inborn implication that heritage denotes a greatness of the past, where greatness is epochally removed, so their contribution to music while Vital or Important is received as a time capsule. Think of Bowie’s Blackstar, or Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind, or A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It From Here… Thank You For Your Service; excellent records on their own terms, but nominally judged through the lens of the legendary career preceding them.

Given The Twilight Sad have only existed for 15 years, labelling them a “heritage” band might sound facetious; but for anyone who grew up having their unrequited crushes and identity-fraught adolescence soundtracked by the Glasgow band’s debut Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, they’re intractable. They’ve put out good indie rock records since Fourteen Autumns, successfully evolving without compromising the exasperated sensitivity which draws new fans in like a trail of breadcrumbs, becoming one of those bands whose unshowy consistency has marshalled them towards that most backhanded of compliments; “underrated”.

Without denigrating the inbetween records in the slightest, It Won/t Be Like This All the Time is a different beast. It’s simultaneously a 2019 album and a timeless one, grappling with fiercely on-topic discussions of masculinity and mental health while tackling rock’s perennial burden of early-onset listlessness and the passage of time’s ennui. It’s an album which catalyses self-reflection and enables the listener to grapple with their own problems, joining the pantheon of other capital-G great rock records which extend genuine mental health support by virtue of existing.

But at what cost to the artist? That’s something Twilight Sad lyricist and lead singer James Graham knows better than anyone.

***

When I met Graham in a café in the south side of Glasgow the day after New Years, I was eager for him to break down the genesis of It Won/t; its inspirations and aspirations. Graham grounded me instantly: “This is our job now, we know we have to release albums.”

He clarified: “For me it's not a job like that really, I have to have a reason to write a song, to write an album even more so. We needed time to get home, to get back to real life because that was not real life, those tours. They were some of the best moments of my life, and the best moments for the band, but I've never been used to something like that before. It was such a grand scale, and everyday you're pinching yourself, ‘how is this happening to me?’”

The tour Graham’s referencing was a six month US and Europe tour with The Cure – a band he passionately confesses to be the Sad’s absolute favourite – where they, a group of softly spoken pals from the west of Scotland, were playing sold out venues of 10,000 people every night.

“Yeah, we're not used to 10,000,” Graham laughs. “It was also the way we were treated, Robert [Smith, Cure frontman] arranged a bus for us, we've never done a bus tour before as a band, we're like ‘woah this is mental’. Playing our music in those kinds of arenas, until you do it you don't know if your music's going to work. I know our music's big, cinematic, so you hope you could fill a space like that, but you don't know until you actually physically get up and start doing it. Luckily it seemed to connect."

Graham added: “For a band like us who work so hard, where things haven't always worked out, we've had some really horrible tours where attendance wasn't great, long gruelling drives, being away from home for a long time; to get to a point where our last record did connect, which was reflected by attendances, and then that [The Cure tours] to happen at the end of it, it was a big 'wow, how far we've come since the start – but don’t get used to this.'"

Those peak moments of perfect concord between the melody and the noise; those all-too-brief seconds of aural bliss which The Cure specialise in? It Won/t Be Like This has a good four or five those. The record began to take shape after the tour had finished, but Graham and Sad co-songwriter (and drummer) Andy MacFarlane derived plenty of ideas from their time with the stadium rock icons.

“Sitting watching them every night, watching the audience every night, I think subconsciously things were sinking in, and we knew what we wanted to do with this album after that tour. Andy did musically anyway, cause he scrapped everything; basically, we wrote the album [on tour] and then Andy scrapped all the music - though he kept all my vocals. He said when he sent through the new version, ‘you'll notice the music's different...’ aye fucking right it is. But it was for the better definitely, because he felt what he'd done wasn't good enough. We took on board that we can't just settle, not that we ever did, but we wanted to be better than we were."

Once the tour was over Smith even volunteered his ear for a second opinion on the songs’ early drafts. “We gave the demos to Robert as well and he wrote back to us and rated them out of ten, which was pretty nerve-wracking. Sending unfinished demos to one of the greatest songwriters of all-time, then getting a response of ‘this is an eight out of ten, could be a nine’, that’s really fucking cool. He never said ‘do this, do that’, he said try this, try that, which was really cool. He gave options, suggestions. He was right 90% of the time; it wasn’t massive things, just ‘see this breakdown, try this’, which I think contributed to those peak moments on the record.”

The peak Cure-adjacent moments, that is. “All that only comes from working on it a million times, being patient. And I'm not a patient person! Normally I'm like ‘fuck it, next one’, but it was really satisfying to take our time without overanalysing it. I'm glad it has those moments, a new dynamic for us - and not just quiet/loud, because in the past we've been known just as the quiet/loud band, I think it's more layered.”

They’ve been known as a “quiet/loud” band, post-punk, indie rock, you name a rudimentary genre label and for certain at one point it’s been tossed at The Twilight Sad and unable to stick; Graham however, in an interview around the time of Fourteen Autumns’ release, described the band as “folk with layers of noise”. I asked him if he stood by this.

“I think it's down to the words. My lyrics are about me and where I'm from and things that have happened to me and my friends and family. To me that's what folk music is; not writing about politics, writing about very personal things. It’s also the substance of the music. Performing these songs acoustically, you've got to be thinking you've got a song beneath [the noise]. I think 90% of our songs you can take away all of the layers and there's a song there. We’ve went a bit more new wave, having synths and that, but I think the ethos of folk is at the heart of what our band is.”

Graham’s carefully enunciated Scottish accent has always been one of the band’s greatest assets, its guttural moroseness communicating the savage melancholy of his condition. A music critic cliché is describing the efficacy of someone’s voice as an instrument in itself; Graham’s accent however is more a natural vocoder, a conveyor of agony more clinical than any autotune.

“Listening to [Aidan Moffat, of Arab Strap] was the catalyst of all that. I grew up near Falkirk, and hearing his lyrics and remember thinking ‘well that's just writing about where's he's from, just going to the pub, being bored with his pals’, and he's singing how he would communicate normally in a conversation, and that was like ‘wow, you can do that?’, just relaxing and telling your stories as they're meant to be told. It'd feel dishonest if I sang in an American tinge.”

He elaborated: “I think more than anything it's not about being Scottish and glum; unlike in Trainspotting, I don't think it's shite being Scottish. I can't help being Scottish, and that's going to come through in my music. I'm not wearing a kilt or flying a saltire above my head, but I think the honesty is what comes from it; by singing that way, it is honest. We didn't go ‘alright, we're going to write this song and Jamie you're writing in a Scottish accent because Americans love the Scottish accent and we're going to sell shitloads’ whereas it's the opposite. It's just who you are, and unfortunately that is melancholy.”

Arab Strap and the Sad share plenty of DNA; while the former is more traditionally folky than its noisier cousin, lyrically they’re evocative of very specific contexts and characters, but expressed with such modest relatability that both transmute the intensely personal into the universal.

“Aidan is one of my friends now, which is mental, but he's still a massive influence. Did you hear the Christmas record he just did? There's covers on it that are funny but brilliant at the same time, but then there's this song about looking in the mirror and seeing this old man, seeing everything through old age, and it's just genius. I related to that, that was exactly how I was feeling that day. We've released three songs from the record now, and after we released ‘I'm Not Here’ people got in touch saying ‘I know you're talking about this as your own experience, but this is how I feel it’, which was nice because it was the most honest I've been, without the metaphors I normally use.”

The Sad are synonymous with abrupt sensitivity, lyrics of candour and empathy interrogating depression, loneliness, deepest remorse and bitterness. When Fourteen Autumns came out in 2007 it starkly contrasted with the toxic laddiness which monopolised UK rock at the time. Mental health and masculinity are issues being more directly confronted by the scene these days, with Shame and IDLES both releasing worthy records last year which grappled with the noxious expectations placed upon the modern rockstar, and the modern man. As someone who’s sang about this for over a decade, what does Graham think of this fresh dynamic?

“I’m kind of the antithesis, or my music is, of that toxic masculinity, going on stage and greeting my eyes out every night. I was talking to my dad the other day, about growing up and how you were meant to act and think, and if you don't act that way you're different and weird, especially in the middle of Scotland. I'm very lucky I don't have a dad like that but I've seen where it comes from. When I was growing up it was ‘go and get a real job, get an apprenticeship, don't waste your life looking for these fancy dreams’. How is that a way to engage with anybody?”

“I want freedom from that as much as possible. I have a son and I want to teach him that that's bullshit, utter bullshit. My wife dressed our wee boy with pink trousers on and somebody in the street said "aw look at the wee girl" and I'm like what? Why does the colours matter? In the first song [‘10 Good Reasons for Modern Drugs’] there's a nod to that, ‘all wee boys look the same’, cause I was out one night in my local pub, looking around and thinking ‘what the fuck is going on’, and was disgusted by how young men were behaving.”

Graham continued: “I've got nothing against the bands in lad rock, sometimes it's not their fault. It’s more about how we can get away from that and just make it about everyone being able to go and enjoy their time and space at gigs. It's a basic solidarity really. That's what I want to promote. There's bands I've watched for years who as they've got more popular they've attracted that type of laddy audience. I have friends who don't go and see certain bands now cause they don't enjoy it, not that they feel threatened - well in a way they do, since their way of watching and enjoying that music is threatened.”

Fourteen Autumns came out through Brighton label FatCat Records, who in the late 00s oversaw something of a renaissance in Scottish rock. Complementing the Sad were Edinburgh’s harder-edged We Were Promised Jetpacks, and also the folk rock band Frightened Rabbit, who were, and remain, very close friends with the bandmates from the Sad, often helping with demos, tours, but also very essentially as supportive and considerate pals outside the music bubble. Frightened Rabbit’s lead singer Scott Hutchison committed suicide last May, a tragedy which broke the world for his friends and family, countless fans, and Graham.

I’m hesitant about pursuing a topic so delicate, but Graham insists “I'm happy to discuss Scott. I think we should discuss Scott, I think everybody should talk about Scott.”

When asked about that those few years at FatCat, Graham smiles: “Looking back it's weird, even before Scott passed me and him would talk about it quite a lot; we never thought that we were doing anything special, we were writing songs just for fun. There was a point when we were sending each other our demos, back and forth with Scott and Grant [Frightened Rabbit's drummer and Scott's brother] to see whether we each thought it was cool, that was enough for us. We weren't looking for any widespread acclaim, just wanting to make a record and have fun; even if the subject matter wasn't exactly fun. We were skint, playing shitty venues, struggling to get by, but we had the fucking best time together. This whole journey started with them, and we've constantly looked out for each other as time went on.”

Graham pauses before continuing: “We were really struggling at one point on the third record, and Scott asked if we wanted to come and support their tour in America, cause they were doing really well and saw we were struggling, but believed in us and wanted to get us in front of more people. He didn't have to do that. We kept releasing things together, even when they went to Atlantic [Records, the label Frabbit joined after the release of their third record The Winter of Mixed Drinks] we kept the connection. We were best friends, really.”

“There was a friendly competition too; when they released [2006 debut album] Sing The Greys we thought ‘fuck, we've got to get the finger out’. Then we released Fourteen Autumns, and I remember being at a party and Scott said ‘everybody into this room now’ cause I'd given him a copy of the album, and he said ‘we're all going to sit down and we're going to listen to this Twilight Sad album’, and I remember sitting there physically forced to listen to our own music, distinctly remember the look on his face where he's just *grimaces*; because we were proud, we knew we'd made something special for us, and I knew he'd love it as well."

"Then I could see the determination in his eyes, and he basically went; right, I see your Fourteen Autumns, and I raise you Midnight Organ Fight. So he came back from America, and we sat and listened to [Midnight] in his flat in the West End on a CD player, me and Andy sitting in front of *that* and turning to each other thinking ‘ah fuck’.”

“We always had each other's back. I only look upon those moments with love and fondness. I still get those feelings every time each of us released a record. This time is going to be weird though, cause every time one of us released a record we'd message each other congratulations, so on the day of [It Won/t’s] release, I'm going to miss that. I've been thinking about that morning a lot, what it’ll feel like when that text doesn’t come. I'll say it felt good back then; not because we thought we were making something influential or great, just because we made it for us. There's a lot of darkness that surrounds everything back then and also now, but that was a really positive, happy period of our lives, and nobody can take that away from us.”

Thankfully, part of Hutchison pulsates through It Won/t Be Like This, having contributed ideas to most recent single ‘VTR’, a lasting imprint and tribute to their friend.

“Him and Andy were wanting to work together, trading ideas back and forth, then Andy said ‘I started to work on something from what Scott suggested, and I started to like it, so thought I'd just keep it for the Sad album.” It's nice knowing that Andy produced the track, when Scott was on his mind. And that song has the most hopeful line in the whole record, it's nice to note there was still hope when we were writing that. I do follow it up with a line that doesn't have any hope, but it's nice to know there's that through-line, that connection to him. There will be in everything we do from now on.”

When I saw the Sad at Primavera Festival a few weeks after Hutchison’s death, their first gig since, they closed their set with a cover of Frightened Rabbit’s ‘Keep Yourself Warm’, which was indescribably moving, and a vehicle for some desperately needed catharsis; for myself, the audience, and the band.

“I didn't know if it was the right thing to do,” Graham says, “but after the reaction from the crowd I thought ‘we've got to do this every night’, and though I've not been able to get through it without crying, we've carried on playing it. I was thinking that maybe after a while I would be able to finish without, but... I’m always thinking about whether it's the right thing to do, but as I say we should be talking about Scott, we should be singing his words, because he was brilliant. Doing it for the first time, it's very blurry for me now. I'd like to try and remember it, I do every night when we play it. That first time, hearing people clapping along to the drumbeat knowing immediately what we were about to do, it was really special.”

Has the band played Glasgow since?

“No, no we haven't. That's going to be... we played in Edinburgh and that was, I can hardly remember it was that blurry. When we play the Barrowlands it'll be... I don't want to put any expectations on anything, but I just know what people are going to be like; which is great, we're in that room together, and we'll sing it together. I think we'll get through it. I've seen him play that song so many times there, and it'll be fitting for us to play that song for the first time in Glasgow at the Barrowlands, in a place that holds so many memories for both of us.”

It's now something happens that even now seems surreal, the kind of ludicrous coincidence that’d be dismissed from the early draft of an indie dramedy for being too on-the-nose or sentimental. The café starts playing Frightened Rabbit’s ‘Loneliness & The Scream’, the first time either of us have heard their music since Hutchison’s death.

“I've sang [Frightened Rabbit] but I've not been able to listen to them. That coming on there, it took me a wee bit. I'm not a religious guy or believe in certain things, but stuff like this keeps occurring and it feels like it means something. The record was written and recorded before what happened. The connection through some of the words I'm singing and the themes on it, the coincidences are scary. I can't quite explain it, there's a feeling of Scott within this.”

A parallel between the Sad and Frightened Rabbit, or more specifically Graham and Hutchison, is their accented vocals, as alluded to earlier. Like Graham, Hutchison sung accented because it was honest, to help purge his demons, or try to.

“People are starting to see the reason I do it is to get something out. The reason Scott did it is to get something out. That's something that scared me after it happened. Without this I would be lost, and I'm lucky that I have this. But after everything that's happened it's made me think ‘is it actually good for me?’ Scott was doing the same thing, and it didn't... it did help him, but it didn’t.”

“I'm terrified about releasing a record, I always am, the pressure I put on myself. I wrote these songs for myself, and sometimes you forget that once you release them you're putting yourself on the line to get absolutely slated, and that would destroy me. If somebody slates the record you get another 100 people saying it's great, I'll look at that one who's slated me and it'll tear me apart, and is that good for me? Is the reason I do this in the first place actually helping me? It helps in the writing and recording process, but the releasing and putting myself out there I'm not too fond of to be honest. I enjoy talking to people who like our music, that's a lovely thing, but this process isn't what happens all the time, and you can't escape it now with social media. If somebody thinks you're shite you can't hide from it, and I'm the type of person who really takes it to heart, and it affects me in my everyday life. I know we're about to release a record and I should feel excited about it but I feel genuinely terrified and questioning if this is good for me anymore.”

Graham pauses again. “That's something that Scott and I spoke about regularly. How the release process and criticism affected us, and luckily people have been very kind about both our bands over the years but sometimes people can be really cruel and snidey and I don't know why. Obviously Scott and I are very, well emo, let's not get away from that, very emotional and you can tell through our songs we take things to heart. When you look at Frightened Rabbit's rise, when they're selling out big shows and seeing this guy smiling on stage people think ‘everything must be fucking great’; that life can be brilliant, but with those highs are crashing lows. Nobody gets to see that, and you're not meant to tell people about that in interviews.”

“I think that's something I find hard and strange, when you're going out promoting something you're meant to be confident, positive, ‘this album is the best fucking thing we've ever done’, if you don't say that then people maybe question you; ‘do they even like it, do they appreciate they're living the dream?’ When you're doing an interview on the radio or telly you’re told you can never comes across as tired, because people will think ‘fuck them then, they're tired, all they're doing is making music’. I found that tour we did for two months, I was singing new songs, singing Scott's songs, travelling for eight hours a day, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I just couldn't play anymore gigs than what we played and I became a shell of a person for a couple of days, and that's never happened to me before.”

Asked if there’s any real provision or support for artists in the industry, Graham shakes his head: “none, not at all, if I feel lost I don’t know what to do. After that Cure tour, to a guy who's never experienced peaks as high as that, I came home and looked at the wall and thought 'what the fuck happened?' I love my life at home; I've got a wife and kid I adore to bits but coming back I felt completely alien from everything. The only support I would have is my close friends and family, but I didn't want to burden this on them. I didn't know where to turn, what number to phone, who to go to. I'm maybe not the best person to talk about this stuff since I'm not educated about it, but I have felt it, so maybe I am."

“I think that a lot of the feelings I have are in those songs. Writing started sparking things, and not in a great way, but I got it out, then the whole process starts again of feeling anxious about having my feelings out there. Not promoting the album title, but "It Won't Be Like This All The Time" is meant to be taken as both a positive or a negative; it won't be like this all the time so cherish this moment, it won't be like this all the time because things will get better. But we need coping mechanisms in case it doesn’t.”

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2TU2QXL