On Forget the Night Ahead, it is evident that this is not the same Twilight Sad that two years ago contributed a cover of Radiohead’s track “Climbing up the Walls” for a tribute album to OK Computer. The band’s remarkable work on the track and their 2007 debut album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters did end up putting them on quite a number of music aficionados’ radars. These people no doubt have very specific tastes – for Forget the Night Ahead is an album with an equally specific focus.
The Twilight Sad are loud, although not quite in that angsty sort of way. Think more along the lines of an organized cacophony of introspection, as of The Moz had decided to make industrial music. Such as with the opening track “Reflection on the TV”, which is almost Nine Inch Nails-like in its boisterous personality. In fact, scratch that; this album sounds more like a jimmied-together creature of music and a jet engine.
Boiled down to more simpler elements, it becomes clear with this album that there are two very large standout features; the first of which is the noise. The second, which are perhaps equally as engaging, are the vocals and lyrics. It’s amazing that the vocals in the variety of interesting tracks on this album don’t get drowned out in the crushing turbulent sea of instrumentals that abound here. The lyrics are pointed and clear enough for vocalist James Graham to get his lyrical messages across with a good amount of precision. He’s adept at singing words that are steeped in a fair amount of high-level stress.
It’s easy to envision many people having difficulty enjoying this record. Perhaps they would say there’s no sense in talking too much about individual tracks here, as the majority of them have a disconcerting quality of being generically similar to each other. However, the closing track “At the Burnside” does tend to stand out a bit more than its predecessors. Starting with a starkly-sounding piano medley that very quickly begins to burst at the seams with the same energy listeners have been made familiar with in the previous tracks.
If there’s one great quality to Forget the Night Ahead, it is its stamina to remain intense all the way through. Too bad this also seems to be its most inherent failing, in that it never seems willing to just let up for a bit. In the end, it feels rather fatiguing.
(7.5/10)
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