Listen to two new songs from The Twilight Sad
Following a knockout year for The Twilight Sad, and ahead of their two biggest headline shows to date, they release new songs Rats and Public Housing
It’s been quite the year for The Twilight Sad, with their latest album IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME gaining them a spot on the Scottish Album of the Year longlist, a number one in the Scottish Albums Chart and a Top 20 placement in the UK Albums Chart. The album also launched another busy year of touring for the band, with more dates alongside pal and mentor Robert Smith’s band The Cure.
With the year almost over and the band set to play their two biggest headline shows to date at the end of November (Kentish Town Forum, London on 23 Nov and Edinburgh's Usher Hall on 30 Nov), The Twilight Sad have two brand new songs for you to wrap your lugs around.
Rats and Public Housing will be released as a Double A-side in December via Rock Action. Limited to just 1000 individually stencilled copies, we can already feel the tension the band's most loyal fans must be going through at the thought of not scooping up one of the limited edition copies. The two tracks are streaming now; listen to them below.
"Rats was in the first [run] of demos – along with Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting and The Arbor – that paved the way for developing the sound and direction we wanted to take the album in," explains the band's guitarist and composer Andy MacFarlane. "We were trying to capture more of the chaotic live sound of the band and condense it into three minutes."
"Rats doesn’t have much hope; it’s from a dark place,” frontman and lyricist James Graham says. “It was written on a dark day for me personally. I think that’s quite obvious with lines like ‘all you love is dead’. It's also a reaction about a mindset I think is very dangerous in our society: the attitude of ‘just get on with it’ and that talking about your feelings or insecurities can be seen as a weakness.
“I think it’s a major problem taking that approach towards young men especially,” he continues. “The term ‘man up’ being a horrible example. The line ‘don’t take it to heart’ represents this. Knowing that attitude exists all around you when you are struggling makes you feel very alone. These songs are bleak but writing them helped get me out of a bad place in my head."
Rats and Public Housing are both available digitally now and will be released as a Double A-side in December via Rock Action; The Twilight Sad play Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 30 Nov