The Twilight Sad bury good songs in a haze of recycled noise.
Forget the Night Ahead proves that you still need solid song writing chops - not the pretty effects to make a good album.
The Twilight Sad
Forget The Night Ahead
Released on Sep 22, 2009
Most contemporary art forms today,
music included, tend to receive a backlash when the artist dives into
self-indulgent excesses. Essentially employing style for the sake of
style without any cohesive idea or rational for why the style is appropriate.
While patrons (which today are essentially the music labels or the art
galleries) can always be blamed for using the power of the buck to push
artists towards a more mainstream, safe, familiar, or profitable palette,
it ultimately falls back on the artist to shoulder most of the blame.
So upon first listen of The Twilight Sad’s Forget
the Night Ahead, it seemed that
the band had put to death the whole ‘wall of sound’ concept. Essentially
the band’s sound is a cluster of distorted, turbulent noise that has
been perfected by a million other bands proceeding them. I had been
quick to label them as simply regurgitating what Sonic Youth and My
Bloody Valentine had done decades prior. So it comes with a certain
sense of joy that after a few more listens the band started to slowly
reveal that – hey! – there are actual songs buried amongst the rumble.
Opening tracks “Reflection of the
Television” and “I Became A Prostitute” will make your ears
bleed a nice warm red liquid if you’ve cranked your speakers to (un)healthy
levels. “I Became A Prostitute” especially displays the band’s
knack for the sort of sonic assault that would make My Bloody Valentine
proud. The over distorted guitar wails tend to take the whole quiet–loud
song-writing aesthetic particularly to heart and it’s ultimately effective.
The album takes an interesting turn after “I Became A Prostitute” into a suite of three ‘slow’ songs (and I am using slow fairly loosely here). “Seven Years of Letters” and “Made to Disappear” actually use clean guitars for their verses and it provides some breathing room after the assault of “Prostitute.” “That Room,” the final song in this three part suite uses a clean (!) piano melody as the main hook of the song and features the voice of lead singer James Graham which, despite his rather static range, fits perfectly alongside the melancholic atmosphere the album plays out in spades. More importantly it is in this break in the album that I first began to realize that there are sincere song structures and thoughtful song-writing being employed. While the band never fully veers away from the comfort of noise, they do make an effort to create tension and atmosphere in other ways. It’s a welcome effort that makes Forget the Night Ahead sound like a fully realized and thought out album.
The Twilight Sad show that no matter how you dress up these songs, there is a heart to the album that ultimately defines the album and makes the trip rewarding. For the future, I think it will be interesting to see what they can do when they try a “less is more” approach to their music. Until then, you can find me drifting the wastelands of noise they’ve built in Forget the Night Ahead.
High Point
The album hints that the band can do more with less and their strongest songs come when their either in full bombast in “I Became A Prostitute” or when they pull the reigns back in “That Room.”
Low Point
The album’s sound is a retread. It’s been done to death so if you’ve never fancied atmospheric noise, this album won’t convert you.
Posted by Danny Lopez on Sep 29, 2009 @ 6:30 am
