Twilight Sad are a band that have featured quite regularly on the Middle Boop site recently, mainly because they play truly brilliant music, also because they are damned nice guys and we are certainly not the only people who think so judging by the fact that a mere few months ago before the release of their publicly lauded second album 'Forget The Night Ahead' they were playing The Lexington and the ICA which, although no one could fault that these are both great venues they are half the size of the Scala, a venue which they have packed out pretty well for tonight's show.
Missing the first band 'Talons' we arrived just in time to watch Airship, who showed promise with their first song, an atmospheric number that built up to a heavy distorted chorus but sadly the rest of the set transcended into radio friendly indie pop and although it was pleasant to listen to, it was nothing new.
After a fair old wait we were finally graced with the presence of Twilight Sad who have clearly become a lot more comfortable playing their new material live since the last time I saw them, opener 'Reflections Of The Television,' singles 'I Became A Prostitute' and 'Seven Years Of Letters' were played with such intensity it was hard not to become completely immersed in their sound.
Twilight Sad have an interesting presence on stage, considering the aggressive music they play, the bass player and keyboardist hardly break a sweat with the most movement seen by either was to take a swig of beer between songs which I'm sure is mostly due to their high levels of concentration in making sure every song is note perfect but nonetheless the showmanship is left to lead singer James Graham who tackles this task in a rather unorthodox fashion, singing each song without any eye contact on the crowd and slamming his mike stand repeatedly with the music whilst occasionally grabbing some drum sticks and basing the hell out of a snare along with the drummer, he is still generally humbled by the crowds participation and affection for the music.
This was a benchmark performance by a band who are most certainly going from strength to strength, the pounding drums and screeching guitars were affluent from start to finish and with their finale 'I'm Taking The Train Home' making sure that if anyone hadn't been deafened up until that point, they certainly were after that.
Thanks to these guys I have now started to wear ear plugs at gigs.
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