I’m not going to go into detail on this one because just about every other blogger in the world already has, but if you’re into epic Scottish bands who batter you about like a raft in a storm, you’ll definitely want to check out the new record from The Twilight Sad. It’s called Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (eMusic), and people seem to really like it a lot (including even an 8.6 from Pitchfork), proving once again that there are few quicker paths to the heart of your average music blogger than a Scottish accent.
For as much as I like shoegaze and big atmospheric rock songs (and Scottish accents, of course), the record doesn’t hit me quite as hard as I might have expected. For all the great moments, it’s all just a little too serious, and drags on in places (there’s a lot of 5 and 6 minute songs here) without giving you the payoff you feel that you’ve earned. Perhaps the hard part is that everything that’s great about this record is encapsulated in the first track, so even though the rest is perfectly acceptable, it still feels like a bit of a letdown. But that one song is truly stunning:
Cold Days From The Birdhouse – The Twilight Sad
It’s a peaceful day, a slightly dissonant beauty, which steadily spins further beyond your control until you find yourself descending inexorably into the maelstrom. Finally, you’re spit out, disoriented, unable to quite remember how you ended up here, or where to go from here.
And maybe that’s what is missing: they don’t seem quite sure where to go after this song either. Still, minor complaints aside, I do find myself coming back more and more, and this is just the type of album that often takes a long time to grow on me. So there’s a good chance my initial hesitance will be long-forgotten a few months from now when I’m raving about this as one of the best of the year. Only time can tell.