Since seeing them in Tucson last week, I have been devouring all things by The Twilight Sad, whose stunning new album, Forget the Night Ahead, possesses all the emotion and feeling sorely lacking in a mostly underwhelming year marked by dull synth-pop and a hyped-up lo-fi scrap heap.
I was distressed that it took until almost October for a true album-of-the-year contender to reveal itself to me. Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix; Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone; The Cave Singers’ Welcome Joy and Mos Def’s The Ecstatic were the worthy front-runners for me. But Forget the Night Ahead is pulling at me, begging for repeat listens. Granted, I’m probably still riding the high from the show, but the album has challenged me in ways others have not — lyrically, emotionally and musically. The charged-up catharsis from Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters has simmered slightly, a huge distorted wall of sound making James Graham’s lyrics this time around more mysterious but equally compelling (though he sheds a little light on each song from the album here).
Seattle’s KEXP further enables my fix by offering videos of a live performance by the group from Musicfest NW.
