Released: 18th January 2019
Rating: ★★★
After over a year crisscrossing the globe as opening act for The Cure, Scottish outfit The Twilight Sad hunkered down in a studio to lay down their fifth album. The influence and tutelage of Robert Smith hover over ‘IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME’, from its chiming guitars and prominent basslines.
For a band that’s been plugging along somewhat under the radar for ten years, the offer to tour the world under Smith’s wing must have been too good to turn down, and taken them places they’d never dreamt of. The task now is to move out of the shadow of The Cure’s monolithic presence.
And core duo Andy MacFarlane and James Graham largely achieve that, with some lung-busting and anthemic choruses that their mentor would surely have shied away from. After years of graft, The Twilight Sad are standing tall with a record that affirms that they truly deserve to be here.
Dillon Eastoe
