The Twilight Sad 'Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did'

The Twilight Sad's debut album '14 Autumns and 15 Winters', from nowhere, was one of the highlights of last year. The Glasgow band mixed passionate vocals, loud guitars and a pounding rhythm section to create a sound that occasionally resembled My Bloody Valentine fronted by one of the Proclaimers. That is meant to be a compliment, the album was one of the best five released last year and gets played on the 'TracksandGigs stereo' extremely regularly.

This new EP is designed to show another side of the band. It features four new recordings of songs from the LP, a new song and a Daniel Johnston cover. The arrangements are very different, far more restrained and the band never unleash their 'full on noise' as they often do on '14 Autumns..'. This turns the focus to the vocals and the melodies and reveal James Graham to be a quite amazing singer. Losing none of the passion he shows on the bands louder recordings, he twists and turns the lyrics of these songs to give them a different feel to the earlier recordings.

'And She Would Darken The Memory' in particular is stunning here. Building slowly into a dense soundscape but never cutting loose, with violin and organ used to great effect, it circles the listener creating a truly haunting effect. The Daniel Johnston cover 'Some Things Last A Long Time' is another highlight using space and tension in a similar way to 'Talking With Fireworks' from the LP.

The first time you listen to this EP, you keep expecting the band to cut loose and use the wall of sound guitar sound as they did on the album. They never do, instead using tension, reverb and slow builds to create an entirely different sound but with the same passion in the vocals. This is a very confident release for such a young group and shows a band who are ready to try different ideas and experiment with their sound. Its a great companion to '14 Autumns..' and we await the follow up LP with very high hopes.

9.1

'Here It Never Snowed...' is out now on Fat Cat Records on LP/CD/download.