The Kilsyth band top off their most successful year with a triumphant and emotionally charged performance to a packed Usher Hall.
It’s been quite a year for the UK’s most underrated band. The start of the year saw the release of their 5th Album – It Won/t Be Like This All the Time to universal critical acclaim and found itself tipped as a contender for album of the year by those that know – in mid January!
Around the same time, founding members James Graham & Andy McFarlane played a series of acoustic ‘instores’. One these intimate shows was on the back stage of the Usher Hall in front of 200 fans stacked into the ornate choir gallery. That night, amongst all the music and banter, James couldn’t resist turning his back to us all and address an imaginary sea of adoring fans in the eerily empty main auditorium with a Springsteen stylee ‘Good evening Edinburgh’. Oh how we laughed – like that was ever going to happen?
Fast forward 11 months, and we’re back at the same beautiful auditorium – only this time there’s 2000 more of us and we’re here to witness their biggest ever headline show and last date of an exhaustive World tour – from the proper side of the stage.
Appearing to a maelstrom of white noise and strobe lights it was straight into [10 Good Reasons for Modern Drugs], Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting and the anthemic VTr. As he does throughout the whole show, vocalist James Graham gives over his whole body to the music – twisting, contorting and at several points in the show, lying flat out on the stage. It’s indicative of how much this means to him and the band. He tells us “This is like a dream” – the realisation of the dream he joked about back in January.
At several points during the show James takes time to reflect on the journey that got them from the back room of Bannermans Bar in 2007 to the here and now – even choking back the tears to thank friends, family and fans for their support and devotion over the years.
The majority of the set was drawn from It Won/t Be Like This All the Time and it’s in the live arena that these tracks truly come alive. On record, Brendan Smith’s layered synths had a tendency to overwhelm some of the harder edges of their signature sound. Live, these restrictions are gone and Andy McFarlane’s guitar unleashes a razor wire sharp wall of feedback and distortion that he weaves around the soaring vocal melodies that lie at the heart of Twilight Sad compositions.
The undoubted high point of the evening for most was the penultimate trio of Cold Days From the Birdhouse, The Wrong Car and, what is now a cornerstone of their set, a heartfelt rendition of Frightened Rabbit’s Keep Yourself Warm. It’s clear that Scott Hutchison’s untimely passing had a shared emotional impact on many there as 2200 voices joined in unison to pay tribute, leaving not a dry eye in the house by the closing bars.
Coming full circle with a raucous rendition of 2007’s And She Would Darken the Memory seemed like a fitting end to what was undoubtedly a landmark moment for this band. As the last wails of feedback washed around the venue James was left alone on stage, punching the air in triumph before collapsing to the stage, spread eagle, spent, he couldn’t have given anymore. For all those there, we couldn’t have asked for anymore.
Words and pictures: Calum Mackintosh @ayecandyphotography