aaamusic | On 06, Feb 2012

Two years after Forget The Night Ahead the Scottish band The Twilight Sad comes back with No One Can Ever Know, nine songs for forty-five minutes of sonic explorations.

 

Under the wise guide of Andrew Weatherall, the third album of this trio brings in new influences and a profound sense of unity. Although still far from the magnificence of first album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, No One Can Ever Know shows a decisive improvement toward a solid identity and an even more convincing sound.

 

Quirky, twisted, and dark: the sound of No One Can Ever Know draws upon twenty years of post-punk and dark-wave. Alphabet is Pornography’s era The Cure revisited via Radiohead. With the gothic incipit of Dead City guitars wander erratically in the obscure paths so much loved by Ian Curtis. The album grows after any listening enhancing the half-achieved celebrations of Film School, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, and the too much overlooked Early Years.

 

Sick is a continuous crescendo into melancholic escapes, while Don’t Move is a ride into lands where the Editors never dared to go. Ghosts of Interpol drift through the atmospheres of Nil, Don’t Look At Me, and Not Sleeping, where walk hand-by-hand with Smith-ian paranoias.

 

The uplifting pace of Another Bed is a nihilistic lament where the strong Glaswegian accent of Brooder James Graham stands out against the spacey layers of sound, reminiscent of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Appels + Oranjes.

 

Overall, No One Can Ever Knows represents a fruitful exploration where The Twilight Sad abandons Mogwai’s influences in order to find a more personalised style, in the name of emptiness and scepticism.

 

Lorenzo Coretti