In the seven years since their last album, the Scots have faced down dementia and cancer. Now they’re returning with a visceral new sound – and eager to get back to globetrotting with the Cure
T
o say that James Graham has been through it in the seven years since the last Twilight Sad album would be an understatement. He lost his mother to dementia, became a father, and his own mental health struggles led to the band cancelling a tour with the Cure. The day we talk about the Scottish band’s sixth album, It’s the Long Goodbye, turns out to be the anniversary of his mum’s death. “It’s all right,” says Graham. “It seems like a good day to talk about it.”
Speaking from his home in north-east Scotland on a dark, murky evening, Graham is unflinchingly open about his experiences, often moved to tears as he recounts the last few years. “I was so ill at some points while I was writing these songs that it’s all quite hazy,” he says. “But the moments are coming back to me – of why I wrote a certain song. When I listen to one, I can feel it, ‘Fuck, you were really in it.’”
In every conceivable way, It’s the Long Goodbye is in it as Graham confronts his experiences head on. If you know the Twilight Sad, it’s nothing less than you’d expect – starting with 2007’s Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, they are a band who have always sounded as if they have lived every ounce of their songs. These are songs as therapy – about alienation and inner turmoil, rich in metaphor, with Graham’s evocative Scottish brogue capable of sounding tender and threatening against guitarist Andy MacFarlane’s turbulent guitar.
