Morose Scottish three-piece The Twilight Sad venture outside their comfort zone for their third full-length album No One Can Ever Know. The band claim inspiration from a diverse range of artists on their latest offering, citing the innovative post-punk of Gang of Four and PiL alongside the avant-garde electronic music of Fad Gadget.
The latter of these is perhaps most readily referenced on No One Can Ever Know for much of the record; the distorted guitar previously favoured by the band in forming a distinctive wall of noise gives way to the use of synthesisers to construct a rich musical landscape.
Outside influence is explicitly evident on certain tracks. ‘Sick’, the first official single from the album, bears more than a passing resemblance to Radiohead’s ‘Knives Out’, with its stripped-back, guitar-led melody. The track has a solemn melodic allure of its own though, opening out into the kind of mournfully catchy refrain that the band seem to have mastered on this record. Lyrically, ‘Sick’, like much of the album, is a personal affair. “You look so frail you know / But still you hope / Dear false hope,” laments singer James Graham in his trademark Scottish brogue.
Elsewhere, ‘Kill It In The Morning’ borrows unashamedly from ‘We Carry On’ by Portishead. This moody, industrial metal-tinged album closer builds feverishly towards a breakthrough of New Wave-style pop. The tension and release captured by the track make for a satisfying finale to an often-downbeat album.
The melody-driven No One Can Ever Know is, on the whole, more accessible than previous releases, but the band’s particularly unrelenting brand of gloom-mongering shoegaze is nonetheless unlikely to appeal to every listener. And hardcore fans may too be left in the cold by the new electronic direction.
Yet despite some adjustments in style, the band’s core format does remain largely unaltered: still often sonically grand and sweeping; still unashamedly, deliciously miserable. This is less of a leap in a new direction for the band than a smoothly-executed tiptoe.
7/10
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