Song, by Toad

This album feels like the ultimate, powerful indie-rock template.  As The Daily Growl says, it takes a few listens to perhaps come to love the whole thing, but fortunately there are enough instantly compelling songs on the record to make those repeat listens a genuine pleasure.

It’s simple to describe this record really: a big, powerful blast of confident indie: bombastic and ambitious.  All the really classic tools of the indie rock trade are here: truly heartfelt vocals, moody atmospheric guitars that build and build into a cacophonous frenzy of noise, and a kind of unselfconscious mission to revel in these cliches at their feral best.  James Graham has a phenomenal voice – one that is emotional and sincere when at its quietest and ragged and brutal when unleashed.  At his best he has one of the best devastated indie howls I’ve heard.

It’s not all angry racket, mind you.  They are dab hands at the moody, crackling atmospherics as well, and the way the songs morph from one to the other is an absolute joy.

Most notably, there is a grandiose element to the music.  When the guitars really get going they’re like an overwhelming wave of gut-wrenching anger and heartbreak.  Maybe if The Wedding Present had written Interpol’s first album and David Gedge was from Glasgow you might get something vaguely akin to this, but otherwise I’m at a bit of a loss to describe it.  But it’s a forceful, unabashed marvel of impassioned guitar noise and excoriating indie emotion, this one, and one that will definitely be featuring heavily on my late night drunken turn the volume up all the fucking way and pour me another gin playlists in future.  Bloody marvellous.

The Twilight Sad -  That Summer at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy
The Twilight Sad – Walking For Two Hours

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