Climbing a rung up the mainstream ladder with every new release, The National’s rise in popularity continues unabated. But regardless of your opinion of the band’s more recent output, Pembrokeshire-born, London-based artist Bryde‘s cover of ‘Brainy’ is a timely reminder of what they were before the lyrics grew increasingly literal and they become the kind of outfit which casually enlists the help of Taylor Swift. A sparse, cryptic track which seethes with an underlying intensity, as though the subtext the moment comes unspooling as the song develops. Bryde pulls this tautness ever tighter, capturing every inch of the crackling energy while making the song her own.

Griffin Moyer – Like No One Else

“If you’re going to say something, you might as well be honest.” That’s the maxim under which Nashville-based songwriter Griffin Moyer works. Having left a career in geological survey to pursue music, Moyer is about to release the LP Liar’s Disguise via Like You Mean It Records, and new single ‘Like No One Else’ invites the listener into the straight-talking emotion of his sound. A track where longing is accompanied by a nostalgic sixties warmth, lifting the ache at its centre into its own kind of romance.

Liar’s Disguise is coming soon via Like You Mean It Records.

Jess Kallen – Ink

LA-based musician Jess Kallen has been a staple of the local scene for a while, touring and recording with numerous bands, including the likes of Rosie Tucker and Alex Lahey. Next month, they will release their debut album Exotherm on New Professor Music and to celebrate they have released a brand new single. Titled ‘Ink’, it combines crunchy guitar and a springy sense of momentum. “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday / the time flies when nothing changes,” Kallen sings in what begins as a frustrated ode to everyday monotony, before the big chorus arrives to shake things up. Which is fitting, as Kallen describes ‘Ink’ as a song “about being stuck in a rut, and escaping by surrendering to an impulse.”

Exotherm will be released on 21st June via New Professor Music. Pre-order it now on Bandcamp.

John Hollywood – Leavings

Houston-born, California-based songwriter John Hollywood might draw his main inspiration from the likes of John Prine, Guy Clark and Bob Dylan, but new album Beauty Sleep shows his focus is very much on the present. Take ‘Leavings’, a song about the ever-deepening climate catastrophe delivered with the stark fervour of an old-time Bible preacher, where a father picks through the ashes a failed society for something which might outlast the oncoming violence. “What can I give to my son to help him? / What can I leave him after I’m gone?” Hollywood asks in the opening lines. “I’d leave him my land but the land is forsaken / I’d leave him my house, but the house has burned down.” The song gathers around itself with tumultuous foreboding, the sound of a society reaching its dead-end with no time to turn around.

Nathan Xander – Drive My Car

“He’s a big man, got no feeling below the knee,” opens ‘Drive My Car’, the latest single from Nathan Xander’s Three Waltzes. “When he goes down, getting back up sure ain’t easy.” The track is indicative of New York songwriter’s ability to paint such vivid portraits with so little, each song an elegant slice of life as lived within an uncertain present, be it Xander’s own quest for sobriety or the mind-bending experience of living with twenty-four hour news. As ‘Drive My Car’ highlights, this is delivered with equal parts sincerity and knowing humour, resulting in a wisdom that might not know how life is going to shake out, but is sure enough along for the ride.

Some folks drink, some folks smoke
Tonight, we’ll do a little of both
And if we die, at heaven’s door,
Please don’t tell them I let you drive my car

Nymphlord – Stinks 4 Lyfe

Raised in the forested foothills of Northern California, singer-songwriter and producer Nymphlord says her music was influenced by everything from “90’s alt rock [and] misty bush-whacked trail walks” to “Britney Spears crop tops, dog bites turned scars, and dust-covered pom poms.” This goes some way to explaining the distinctive Nymphlord style, which combines radio-ready pop hooks with a ferocious feminist punk energy and an ethereal experimentalism that sees acoustic guitar become otherwordly. Written in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, ‘Stinks 4 Lyfe’ channels every ounce of fury, frustration and vulnerability into three minutes of catharsis.

Don’t tell me you want it
Don’t tell me you need it
Do you think it’s worth it
Do you think I’m worth shit, hey

‘Stinks 4 Lyfe’ is out now via Lauren Records and available from the Nymphlord Bandcamp page.

Rain Gregorio – Myrtle on Holiday

Having previously recorded under the moniker Mount Rainier, LA’s Rain Gregorio decided to revert to his own name for new EP, Myrtle on Holiday, coming soon via Anxiety Blanket Records, and the switch sees the sound push into newly personal territory too. “It gave me the confidence to excavate part of myself using the observational side of songwriting,” as Gregorio explains. “This is the first time I’ve made something that is true to myself as a songwriter.” The title track is the perfect introduction, its lush yet controlled beat ebbing and flowing as Lexi Vega (Mini Trees) lends backing vocals, all resulting in a sense of closeness which only amplifies the overall emotional resonance.

Sweetbreads – Chaos Is

Led by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Melody Stolpp, Sweetbreads make country-inflected indie pop that they say “will bend your ear, twist your pretty little heart, and get your hips swaying.” Following last year’s EP Out Of Range, Stolpp has again worked with long-time collaborator Nick Watt to write a new song, ‘Chaos Is’. “[It’s] a song about teenage life in the suburbs,” Stolpp describes, “with all the boredom, recklessness, and soul searching that come with it.” The track’s slow build captures the direction of such days, building from seemingly mundane beginnings into something with real emotional charge, and in doing so manages to recreate some of the heightened magic of those formative years.

The Tines – Collarbone

Formed in 2019 from members of acts such as Ports of Spain, Laundry Day, Quiet Giant and Ryxno, The Tines is an indie rock outfit based in New Haven, Connecticut. Back in 2022 they released their self-titled album on Funnybone Records, and latest single ‘Collarbone’ is the ideal entry point for those who let the initial release slip past their radar. A track which combines shimmering dream pop with a more pressing indie rock rhythm, the reverbed vocals drifting above it all to give the whole thing a sunny if enigmatic vibe, drawing the listener into its psych-inflected world.

The Tines is out now via Funnybone Records and is available from Bandcamp.

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A new volume will be posted every few weeks and will offer a collection of really great songs that we’re determined not to let slip past our radar.

Brenda – Children

Having been involved in the Toronto punk scene for a number of years, Brenda got together as a four-piece in 2015. After last year’s double A-side single Sally’s Spit / ICU, the band are back with a new song ahead of the EP, Creeper. ‘Childen’ is about ‘about manipulation and the inevitability of growing up’, exploring the interplay between wanting to grow up and a secret longing to return to childhood innocence. The result is an unsettling, off-kilter track that gets under your skin, the whimsical falsetto of the verses tending toward chaotic noise in the chorus. Watch the coulrophobia-inducing video below:

Creeper is due to be released later this year, and in the meantime you can get the ‘Children’ single from Bandcamp.

Wy – Gone Wild

Taken from Okay, a new album from Swedish duo Wy, ‘Gone Wild’ is a sparse, lonely song detailing a multitude of fears. From anxieties about the death of loved ones, to worries about being misunderstood and rejected, the track charts fear in its various forms, the focus on the vocals giving everything an isolated, introspective feel. As such, the song ends up representing the sensation of being stuck in your own head, a vast lonely place that’s somehow claustrophobic too.

Okay is out now via Better Call Rob and Hybris, and you can get it from Bandcamp.

blue milk – feelin’ Blue

blue milk is the lo-fi folk project of Nashville’s Chrissy Pederson. Pederson re-purposes the elements of age-old folk music for the young people of today, acoustic strums supporting lyrics reminiscent of Frankie Cosmos or Florist. Her latest release, a collection of songs called feelin’ Blue, is short and sweet, full of songs about Millennial angst, boredom and dying young. The whole thing is reassuringly DIY and the perfect antidote to sickly, overproduced chart folk pop.

You can get feelin’ Blue on a name-your-price download from the blue milk Bandcamp page.

Sam Valdez – It’s Alright

Based in Los Angeles, Nevada born songwriter Sam Valdez draws inspiration from Sufjan Stevens, Sylvia Plath and the desert of her childhood to create a sound both dreamy and spacious, as highlighted by new single ‘It’s Alright’. With equal focus on interior and exterior forces, the track examines the masked feelings behind a troubled relationship, though rather than placing them in claustrophobic melancholy, casts them into a wide, expansive soundscape with a life of its own. The result breaks the mould of personal folk, allowing the overall tone and message of the track to remain far more ambiguous, with the sadness accompanied by an unshakeable elation.

Be sure to check out her previous single, ‘Hours‘, and keep an eye on the Sam Valdez Facebook page for future news.

Heck Nugget – Never Feel Bad / Rookie, Judgement

Hailing from Houston, Texas, indie rock trio Heck Nugget mix pop punk energy with nostalgic melancholia, as demonstrated on their previous album, Sleeping With The Forcefield On. Since, the band have been working on new singles to form a split release with Austin band The Red Heroes. ‘Rookie, Judgement’ shows the upbeat, energetic version of the band, the track racing behind throaty vocals, while ‘Never Feel Bad’ is the pensive side of the coin, regret and sadness woven into something warm and affirming, no matter how blue.

The National – The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness

In some instances, the task of writing about your favourite bands or albums is almost impossibly difficult, especially when said act has exploded into about as mainstream a position a hard-working indie rock band can achieve these days. The world doesn’t need another think piece about The National, nor comparative piece on whether The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness stands up alongside their other work. Whether or not this reaches the heights of Alligator and Boxer is kind of beside the point—Berninger and Co. remain one of the most consistent and interesting groups going, and if this record been released by an unknown act we’d be praising it’s achievements. So, while they’ve risen beyond our remit, we still think The National warrant a mention on our site, for posterity’s sake.

The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness is out now via 4AD.

Dream Nails – Tourist

London’s self-described ‘feminist punk witches’ Dream Nails recently put out a sharp, snappy single in preparation for their forthcoming EP, Dare To Care. Channelling the spirit of the Riot Grrrl age, the band create music equal parts catchy and furious, retreating not one iota in their stance against misogyny and the patriacrhal society. “[‘Tourist’ is] about men who present themselves as a hero but all they really want to do is fetishise sad girls,” say lead Janey Starling. “We can smell those guys a mile away and they’re creepy.”

Dare To Care is set for release on the 27th October so keep an eye on the Dream Nails Bandcamp page.

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Here are some great songs from the tumultuous year that was 2003.

1) The Thermals – No Culture Icons
2) The Wrens – Ex-Girl Collection
3) Wintersleep – Orca
4) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
5) Sun Kil Moon – Carry Me Ohio
6) Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Hard Life
7) Califone – Million Dollar Funeral
8) Okkervil River – The War Criminal Rises and Speaks
9) Sufjan Stevens – Romulus
10) Hymie’s Basement – Lightning Bolts and Man Hands
11) The National – Lucky You
12) Malcolm Middleton – Cold Winter
13) Damien Jurado – Amateur Night
14) Cursive – Sierra
15) The Constantines – Shine a Light
16) Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Jeanne, If You’re Ever in Portland
17) The Unicorns – I Was Born a Unicorn
18) The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle
19) Songs: Ohia – Farewell Transmission

What did we miss from 2003? Let us know via Facebook or Twitter! Be sure to check out our posts on 2000, 2001 and 2002, and pop back in a month when we’ll be turning our attention to… 2004.

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The world has always been ending, but 2001 really upped the stakes for the first time since the end of the Cold War. Terror became the buzz word in a world of televised attacks and indefinite wars, Wikipedia emerging just in time for us to catalogue such events and believe they were getting more frequent, more severe, closer and closer to home. While art was probably playing catch-up to developments, cinema went for the escape route, with Shrek and Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings beginning their own seemingly endless campaigns, while music reminded us that, for the majority, life went on as normal. Here are some songs that let us know while the world has always been ending, in ways both crushingly huge and pathetically small, we’ve got little choice but to keep on living.

Tracklisting:

1) Tonight Was a Disaster – Castiotone for the Painfully Alone
2) TV Zombie – The Rondelles
3) Ice Cube – Clem Snide
4) I Remember Me – Silver Jews
5) Adopduction – Les Savy Fav
6) Lucky Number Nine – The Moldy Peaches
7) Jenny & the Ess-Dog – Stephen Malkmus
8) Confusion is Nothing New – Beachwood Sparks
9) Miss My Lion – Scout Niblett
10) Wonder Wonder – Edith Frost
11) Up to My Neck in You –  Mark Kozelek
12) It’s a Wonderful Life – Sparklehorse
13) Sunflower – Low
14) Parks – Four Tet
15) Unearned – Patrick Phelan
16) I Want Wind to Blow – The Microphones
17) Bitters & Absolut – The National

Did we forget your favourite? Are our musical opinions now null and void? If so, let us know on Twitter or Facebook or something. Also, if you didn’t see it last month, you can find our post for the year 2000 here. Otherwise, we’ll see you next month as the world’s least efficient/useful time machine chugs along to 2002.

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Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life is, on the face of things, a relatively simple story. Girl meets boy under less than perfect circumstances and they struggle to make something of it. A classic love tale. But that’s where simplicity, or even any semblance of understanding, ends. This is a novel about post-9/11 New York, a tale of immense confusion, mistrust and paranoia, about poverty in a city smothered by it, about millions of people trying to make a life out of nothing.

Zou Lei is an illegal immigrant from China, a Muslim of the Uighur tribe, Skinner a PTSD-suffering Iraq vet who scraped through three tours of a war that’s followed him home in more ways than one. Queens is bursting at the seams with people looking for something better, or else ways to distract themselves from the present, a roiling, screaming sea of humanity. Lei and Skinner end up together, bonding through a common sadness and a shared appreciation of discipline and exercise. Their unsentimental yet gentle relationship serves as a recognisable, familiar way-in to a recognisable but wholly unfamiliar place. All of this is written in some of the best prose I’ve read in a long while. Beautiful and terrifying and sad, it captures New York as a gritty, humming place that’s crumbling in time with America’s perception of greatness.

Just like the characters, the reader is in alien territory. The overwhelming majority of us cannot fully understand the positions in which these protagonists find themselves. The fringes of society swamped by an overwhelming Lack Of. A lack of money and respect, of kinship and trust, as well as lack of material stuff (Zou Lei has a bed to sleep in but is essentially homeless, Skinner renting a basement with decidedly finite savings). But both are still subject to the American bombardment of dreams and nightmares that constitute the consumerist culture. They see shop-fronts and billboards, they see mistrust in the media and the faces of passers-by. The paradox of feeling isolated and lonely in a crowd of people seems designed specifically to torture them.

But the confusion is deeper than that, one that might impinge on Lei and Skinner more than most but hangs over us all. Not only are there no answers here, there are barely any questions. If 9/11 provided the West with a new narrative, a renewed sense of moral importance and superiority , then events like those at Abu Ghraib snatched away the veil. Technology has made it impossible to ignore that the ‘Bad Guys’ are mostly innocent, scared people like us, that our dirty secrets in exotic wars will not be buried. Everyone lives in this grey area but Skinner personifies it, pining for the purpose and friendship of war while being eaten alive by the truth of it.

“He took a drink from a flask of Bacardi Scorched Cherry and watched an execution on his laptop”

Here’s a collection of songs which we feel are somehow relevant to the themes and feel of the novel.

Tracklisting:

1. I’m New Here – Gil Scott Heron
2. Wish it Was True – White Buffalo
3. Drinking at the Dam – Smog
4. There I was in the pouring rain again, but this time I was at the drive-thru at Mac Donalds’ – Talons’
5. Beacon Hill – Damien Jurado
6. Heartbreaker – Noah Gundersen
7. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
8. Travel Map – Hip Hatchet
9. Death By Dust – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
10. Linens – Water Liars
11. The Modern Leper – Frightened Rabbit
12. No Future (Pt. I) – Titus Andronicus
13. Shitty City – Moonface
14. The Whip – Jesse Marchant
15. Third of Life – A Weather
16. Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones) – Will Johnson
17. Wall Around Your Heart – Huck Notari
18. The Trapeze Swinger (Iron & Wine Cover) – Gregory Alan Isakov
19. I Could Only Stand By – The Weather Station
20. Fake Empire – The National

Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish is out now on Tyrant Books (US) and Oneworld (UK + Aus). Quiet, Constant Friends is available digitally and on cassette via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page.

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Frontman Matt Berninger has teamed up with Brent Knopf of Menomena and Ramona Falls to form EL VY (apparently pronounced “el vie”, rhymes with “hell pie”). The duo plan to release their début album Return To The Moon on 4AD on the 30th of October.

The only song currently available is the title track, or, to give its snappy full name ‘Return To The Moon (Political Song For Didi Bloome To Sing, With Crescendo)’. Berninger’s vocals are as distinctive as ever, but the influence of Knopf sees the sound take a far poppier path than anything The National have put out. The song is strange and, like most of Berninger’s writing, uses specific imagery to create a sense of vague, imprecise meaning.

“Scratched a ticket with the leg of a cricket,
and I got triple Jesus.
Cashed it in for a siamese twin
at the family firing range.

Went to bed woke up in another man’s head
Nobody noticed.
I’m so excited the senators a fighter,
don’t tell me nothing’s changed.
Return to the moon, I’m dying.
Return to the moon, please.”

It’s more than enough to get us interested. You can pre-order the album now via 4AD.

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“She watched the valley burn
like a slow dancer doing turns,
my name was on every tongue.
And all of the smoking ash
like a memory of a time gone bad,
hanging like a shadow.”

Carry the Ghost is due to be released on the 21st of August via Dualtone Music and is available for pre-order now in all kinds of cool bundles.

P.S. Did you know that Noah isn’t the only talented Gundersen? Check out sister Abbie too.

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I wrote a brief piece about Josh Scott’s Aero Flynn a few weeks back after reading some words by Field Report’s Chris Porterfield. The letter/essay (which you can read here) painted Scott as a supremely talented musician and songwriter and spoke of the self-titled Aero Flynn album as “quite seriously a life-or-death record” which should be heard as “a spit in the fucking face of the symptoms of disease, like rot and destruction and apathy and cynicism”. Given how much I respect Porterfield’s work, this sort of language got me excited.

The album begins with ‘Plates2’, a restrained track of gentle synths and countrified electric guitars, not a million miles away from Porterfield’s Field Report, while ‘Twist’, which brings to mind Radiohead, solidifies Scott’s subdued vocal delivery. ‘Dk/Pi’ opens with electronics backed by an ambient hum, the spacey bleeps and bloops of Spencer Krug’s Moonface layered on top of something older and less clear. Shambling drums kick in to create a sound akin to The War on Drugs, Scott’s dreamy vocals drifting through the nebulous arrangement with a delicacy that suggests impermanence, as if the sonic environment threatens to consume him. As the song progresses the instrumentation disintegrates, distorting into reverby fuzz and then a confused white noise before blinking out to leave a large cosmic swelling. This is an electrical anxiety, a malfunction in which communication is lost and isolation complete, Scott a lone astronaut surrounded by planetary screams and an airless dark.

The beginning of ‘Crisp’ is gentler but not without threat, an acoustic strum peppered with glitches which suggest the calm is a façade, a veil under which reside wrung hands and sharp edges. “Can I feel you?” Scott inquires over and over, one of many pleas for connection on the album, leaving the listener to wonder if he’s speaking to an individual or humankind as a whole. Or perhaps it’s just to himself in the mirror. Again the track unravels, the introduction of more prominent synths morphing in the final minutes into another hostile environment, a tumultuous sea or some geomagnetic storm that swallows Scott and drags him further from whatever he is trying to find.

Aero Flynn is at once urgent and suspended, trapped between fight and flight in anxiety’s masterful double bind. “I’m so afraid of everybody else” he sings on ‘Tree’, a stuttering electro-pop song, while even ‘Floating’, a soaring track that’s all blue skies and wide open vistas, is permeated with a sense of dislocation, as if the freedom is not his to own. ‘Maker’ sounds like a Broken Social Scene track where lonely sadness is presented as matter-of-fact, at least until the end where Scott utters a single word (a word I can’t quite make out – Home? Whole?) in a way which sounds like the genuine emotion breaking through, a yelp of helplessness or cry for mercy held back or choked out after the first syllable.

‘Brand New’ feels like a crescendo of sorts, a move away from the futuristic electronics that bring to mind space’s dark void in favour of something more organic, a swelling Precambrian atmosphere where conditions are harsh and life is scarce but maybe not for long. Closer ‘Moonbeams’, a piano led track with elements of The National’s slower work, provides no such epiphany. Slow and nervous and sorrowful, the last track again casts Scott as the outlying astronaut looking back at Earth, the final waves of instrumentation mimicking the beautiful, heart-breaking joy of realising you are but the tiniest of specks subject to the largest of forces beyond your control.

This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable. Instead the record feels like a part of a wider narrative, Scott’s story, the illness and suffering and terror that Porterfield alludes to in his piece. The redemption does not begin with an epiphany on track seven and end with clear-eyed certainty. The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.

Aero Flynn is out now on Ooh La La Records (and Dine Alone Records in Canada).

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Tracklist:

1. Something About Us (Daft Punk cover) – Spazzkid
2. Waves and Waves and Waves (Playlounge cover) – Two White Cranes
3. Dogmas (Kississippi cover) – Cyberbully Mom Club
4. Call Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen cover) – The Yellow Dress
5. Clouds (One Direction cover) – Shunkan
6. Lodi (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover) – Advance Base
7. Emma’s House (The Field Mice cover) – Lost Film
8. Pitseleh (Elliott Smith cover) – Marissa Nadler
9. Pink Rabbits (The National cover) – Matt Paxton
10. Ontario Gothic (Foxes in Fiction cover) – Julia Brown
11. Australia (Attic Abasement cover) – R.L. Kelly
12. Sister of the Moon (Fleetwood Mac cover) – Globelamp
13. I’m On Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover) – Wakes
14. When the Sun Hits (Slowdive cover) – Mao Ra Sun (Feat Dems)
15. Tomorrow is a Long Time (Bob Dylan cover) – Phosphorescent
16. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana cover) – Noah Gundersen
17. The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton (The Mountain Goats cover) – Nathaniel Rateliff
18. Museum of Flight (Damien Jurado cover) – Winterpills

Covers Mix Volume #13 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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This idea made me think of the The Twilight Sad. The band have been labelled along a spectrum, from grumpy, dour Scots to a more extreme, probable-trauma-as-a-child sort of category. While it’s understandable that people will take what an artist presents as some clue as the nature of its creator (they have nothing else to go on, after all), to see albums or careers written off as miserable, aloof or frigid based on the artwork and some cherry-picked lyrics is not only unfair, but also missing the point quite spectacularly (FYI Lead James Graham has nice supportive parents). 

Nobody Wants to Be Here… is the The Twilight Sad’s fourth album. Their début, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, was a critically acclaimed masterpiece, but the others, all too often lumped in with the more saleable Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks, were overlooked for the most part. Graham told The Skinny that the new record is an attempt “not to prove people wrong, but to prove people right,” and it is immensely pleasing to see that this does not mean conforming to a trend but working doubly hard at what TTS are best at.

‘There’s a Girl in the Corner’ opens on a familiarly unsettling vibe, the refrain “you’re not coming back, you’re not coming back from this” hinting at something awful. This indirect method of delivery continues across the album. To choose a few examples, ‘Last January’ is bitter and unrequited and creepy in a desperate way…

“I see you at night,
and I stare at you
You don’t care for me

Without the light,
I still glare at you,
look away from me”

…and ‘I Could Give You All That You Don’t Want’ mixes specific imagery with a dream-like fogginess…

“She said “Pray over there”
She sat and prayed over there
How dare you decide what’s right?
No, you won’t”

This continues throughout the album, until the final track, ‘Sometimes I Wished I Could Fall Asleep,’ a bleak love letter stripped back to the bare bones, just stark piano and Graham’s lyrics. The layers of metaphor are peeled back to produce what is the explicit song on the record, a simple, straight conclusion to what proves a complex piece of work.

The effect the indistinct writing is that of trying to view a disaster unfold through a keyhole, only opening the door once it is too late and the room is empty save for the hum in the air of residual violence or grief. Only Graham seems unable to fully accept what has happened out of sight and instead treads the thinnest, most ridiculous sliver of hope rather than lay down and unravel.

The moral of the album, looping right back around to Berninger and Ellis, is that dark music does not always make for miserable creators or listeners. I’m reminded of the line in Withered Hand’s ‘Religious Songs’, “how does he expect to be happy when he listens to death metal bands?” The Twilight Sad are excellent for the very reason that they deal with pain and darkness in an affirming way, opening up difficult, alienating emotions to show that we are all difficult, emotional aliens. And that we are these things together.

You can buy the album now from FatCat Records, The Twilight Sad’s website or their Bandcamp page.

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