mp3: Mapped By What Surrounded Them

There’s a sense of guilt for not writing as much as I should recently. But any feelings of guilt are compounded by not yet writing about The Twilight Sad and how they’ve been my band of the past few months. To the extent that I had to import their CD from America before its European release, and to the extent that I listen to it on average four or five times a week (I rarely endure any prolonged train journeys without it). And then there’s the fact I saw them put on one of the best live shows I’m sure to see all year, and I still managed not to write about them.

Fortunately, they have set the rest of the blog world alight this year instead, possibly even more in the US than in the UK, which is pretty impressive for a Scottish band. I wish I could play catch up by giving away every single track of their debut album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters and forcing you to listen to it, but that seems a tad immoral. Instead I just picked a random song (I could have opted for any of them, really) and if you need more convincing just head to every other mp3 blog.

The studio stuff doesn’t quite represent the live sound, which is more like a deathly wall of noise. Their show at Oran Mor in Glasgow back in June was pretty remarkable, what with the audience singing along right out of blocks -pretty impressive for the first hometown headlining show. Course, the band were wasted, using alcohol to try dull the nerves, and I was told afterwards by someone who watched them every night on their US tour that he’d never seen them play so badly. But the rest of us were simply blown away by the experience and I was seriously surrounded by grinning fans down the front. It was easy to just close your eyes and visualise them headlining festivals and huge shows - and, of course, the star quality of singer James Graham, who’s capable of vocalising fire, certainly helps.

So yes, I recommend getting in on the game now, before everyone else does.