There seems to be an emerging theme of promising young Scottish acts of rare quality being picked to support The Twilight Sad on tour, and after previously discovering RM Hubbert and Vladimir by arriving in good time, Edinburgh’s Man of Moon proved to be another revelation. While countless duos the world over are cranking it up to sound like a full band, Man of Moon focus on creating space and nuance in their sparse, atmospheric compositions.
The Twilight Sad’s fourth album is unquestionably their most accessible to date, but they’ve certainly not sold out and have lost none of their edge. And so, despite it being Thursday night in York, despite having to play early and perform an abridged set to accommodate the venue’s club night, despite being a very Scottish band playing in England on St George’s Day, The twilight Sad draw a more than respectable audience, and reward them with a set of blinding intensity.
Opening the set with the twin salvoes of ‘There’s a Girl in the Corner’ and ‘Last January’, the emphasis is very much on the new album, ‘Nobody Wants to Be Here, Nobody Wants to Leave’, which is starting to look like a bona fide breakthrough release.
From the get-go, James was in the zone during the songs, twitching as though he’s got a finger in a live socket and eyes rolling upwards into the back of his head, and refocusing between songs by pumping his fist, limbering up and psyching himself, channelling every last drop of emotion. He might not know what the fucking fuck’s going on with the mic stand, but his performance is electric and utterly compelling.
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The band powered through ‘I Became a Prostitute’ and ‘Seven Years of Letters’ back to back, and any disappointment at all of the material from ‘No-One can Ever Know’ being dropped in the shortened set is compensated by the addition of a sweltering version of ‘In Nowheres’, which is as crushingly dense and powerful as the studio version, James sounding dangerously menacing as he croons ‘I’ll get you outside’ in his strong Glaswegian accent.
‘That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy’ was always going to feature, but again, the strength of the performance was something else. Perhaps not as loud as on some outings, the sound – the vocals in particular – were clear and crisp.
Toward the end, James seemed to relax and bantered about the ‘club night’ curfew, but the spell remained unbroken as the rest of the band kept their heads down and fired out a searing ‘Cold Days From the Birdhouse’ by way of a penultimate track.
They did, of course, end the set with ‘And She Would Darken the Memory’, concluding a show that once again confirmed their status as one of the best live acts around.
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