Joining a growing pack of young experimental and occasionally psychedelic folksters and crust-makers that includes the magnificent Thirty Pounds Of Bone and The R.G Morrison (as well as mining a rich, canonical seam that features fellow Scot’s like Arab Strab, The Delgados and Mogmai as well as widescreen specialists like The Triffids) Glasgow’s accordion playing, tom-thumping, The Twilight Sad develop on the promise of last year’s critically acclaimed US-only EP by offering up the fiery, feisty and utterly compelling ‘Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters’ recorded at Chem 19 and Ca Va studios, Glasgow, and mixed and produced by the band and Peter Katis (Interpol, Mercury Rev, Mice Parade) in Tarquin Studios, Connecticut. On tracks like ‘Cold Days From The Birdhouse’ and ‘Walking For Two Hours’ tumultuous, kick-over drum patterns collide with a dazzling, busy deluge of cold, hard overdrive, fused together for the briefest of moments by the constant tender drone of Andy MacFarlane’s accordion. It’s noisy, of course it is, but in the same way that waves are noisy or that leaves are noisy when you jump in ‘em. It’s the white noise of creation, of pollen crashing together on a stiff breeze in early Spring just as the snow is starting to melt and the awkward mud of the road is loosening it’s grip on your boot. A force of nature, perhaps and this is arguably the album’s intention, ‘Talking With Firework’s’ uncompromising nor’easterners saps the heart and mind of the listener in much the same way that Winter challenges the spirit – and yet inevitably the songs’ warm, embracing tunes offer the sincerest of fires. Much like wandering in from the cold, standing by the fire and finding the stiffest of draughts still teasing the flames.
Bit like The Walkmen but with a craggier, celtic twist.
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