Here's an incomplete recap of the Twilight Sad's self-reported listening syllabus leading up to their third album, No One Can Ever Know: Cabaret Voltaire, Magazine, Autechre, Public Image Ltd., Nine Inch Nails. In other words, a group that has to this point been either compared to shoegazers or other Scottish acts (Aereogramme, Mogwai) was looking to completely overhaul its sound. That's a good thing-- while their debut Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters was the work of a powerful and fully realized band, its follow-up Forget the Night Ahead suggested it wasn't a particularly versatile one. Whether it was a result of familiarity or just its suffocated production, the torrential downpour of Andy MacFarlane's guitars and James Graham's heavily accented howl didn't have the same impact.
Now here's a nearly complete list of who No One Can Ever Know actually sounds like: The Twilight Sad. That's also a good thing. No One Can Ever Know is kind of a failure as a total sonic rebranding, but it's a strong transition for the band into something a little more form-fitting while carrying over their commitment to morose atmosphere and Graham's handsome vocals, deeply entrenched characteristics that just so happen to be their strengths.
Still, that they brought in Andrew Weatherall to produce is proof enough that they meant business. The mention of Weatherall's name most instantly brings to mind his work on Primal Scream's Screamadelica and Fuck Buttons' Tarot Sport, two records whose wildly bright timbres and celebratory attitudes exist somewhere way the fuck on the other side of the world from where the Twilight Sad set up shop. That's still the case if song titles like "Kill It in the Morning" and "Dead City" are any indication of what's to come, and they sure are. It's tough to pinpoint the exact contributions, but whether Weatherall was meant as a spiritual adviser or a contributor is a moot point-- the Twilight Sad intended for this to be a frigid, militant, and rhythmic record, and they got it.
The main difference is the shape these songs allow themselves to take: "Cold Days From the Birdhouse" and "I Became a Prostitute" achieved weapons-grade catharsis by cresting and crashing unexpectedly, visually represented by right-angle dynamics. No longer able to fall back on volcanic distortion to bring the big moments, the Twilight Sad have more curvature and forward motion, something closer to the color-drained gothic clangor of *Pornography-*era Cure ("Don't Look at Me") or "Street Spirit"/"Knives Out" Radiohead (particularly "Sick") than any of the post-punk firebrands they namechecked. Accordions (or approximations thereof) wheeze, artificial strings moan, and guitars are thick with distortion, yet everything feels of a single piece, and at first it makes No One feel a bit limited dynamically compared to its predecessors. But it's a record more about obsession than release, and the mesmerizing, cyclical guitar figures of "Sick" and the throttle-down locomotion of "Don't Move" make the best use of repetition as a conveyance of passion.
Easy as it is to dwell on the instrumental changes, No One focuses on what might not be Graham's rangiest performance, but certainly his most absorbing. His vocals have always been too prominent to make the shoegaze comparisons stick, and he's just less of a competitor for sonic space this time around, which is key to understanding No One's appeal. Though an undoubtedly emotive singer, Graham isn't much of a details guy-- there was something post-traumatic about Fourteen and Forget, the sudden rupturing of the music acting as a counterbalance to Graham's lyrics, which were evocative in a general sense and every bit as repressed in a literal one. The emotions were identifiable, the events not so much. There was no real way to determine what they were "about" specifically, which is true of No One Can Ever Know as well, but there's a crucial role reversal for both Graham and the listener, in that the former is an aggressor rather than a victim and the latter is assumed to actually be in on the conversation rather than being a therapeutic sounding board. Or maybe we're in on a confession-- Graham's words are carefully chosen and ominous, something like an urgent call on a tapped phone. Something has clearly gone wrong, possibly a murder but definitely a love crime.
Throughout, Graham does little to distinguish between the two, he and an unnamed other "paired off in the violence." The chorus of subtly dramatic opener "Alphabet" contains the Twilight Sad's most surefooted melody and Graham's most legible declaration: "So sick to death of the sight of you now/ Safe to say I've never wanted you more." Likewise, on "Don't Move", Graham's brogue smears the album's two parallel, primal instincts ("I want you more than you will ever know" and "I'll hurt you more than you will ever know"), his dead-eyed recitation of those words betraying that he's hanging on for dear life to any kind of sanity. It's not really accurate to call "Kill It in the Morning" delayed gratification-- not when No One is actually the most sedate and evil Twilight Sad album-- but after five minutes of spiky industrial grind, the music drops out for an exasperated Graham to yell, "What more do you need to know?/ It's staying here well down below."
It gives the feeling of a story completed, and while the wholeness of No One is absorbing to those in tune with the Twilight Sad's relentlessly downbeat demeanor, it's easy to see it as forbidding or impenetrable. Multiple listens reveal layers instead of peaks, and that's to be expected from a band for whom volume and texture meant more than melody: While the greyscale atmopsherics of "Nil" and "Not Sleeping" contribute to No One's sonic consistency, if you don't immediately take a shine to Graham's mantric vocals, there aren't a lot of thrills to find in the cushy synth pads behind him. But even if No One Can Ever Know is more of a way to please those already down for the cause than a means of bringing new listeners into the fold, the attempts to push the boundaries of sound and setting result in the least-insular Twilight Sad album to date-- the kids are still on fire, they've just left the bedroom.
