The Twilight Sad / Idlewild – The Junction, Cambridge, 29/10/07

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Photographs by Rich Thane

November is just around the corner, the clocks have gone back and it’s suddenly, seemingly, dark all day. What better way to banish those Autumnal blues than see the long standing Idlewild tour their greatest hits around the provinces. Tonight, they visit our fair town of Cambridge.

The PA is continually looping the latest Rilo Kiley album and it only serves to annoy as we wait for The Resistance to take to the stage. A bit of a coup for them, they’re one of the finest local acts around and this is a great opportunity for them to stretch beyond their local fan base. I’m not sure the crowd were that impressed though. They seemed bemused by their gaze-rock. The sound didn’t do them much favours however, the PA seemingly unable to cope with the dark, dense sounds that they were crafting. Fellow TLOBFer, Rich Thane said that they made him physically sick. But hey, better a reaction of something than none at all – they’re still one of my favourite Cambridge bands.

The Twilight Sad

So next up were the real reason why the TLOBF troupe were here tonight; The Twilight Sad. We’ve championed them all year, their debut album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters is a wonderfully dense and esoteric slice of music that conjures up images from the darker corners of the imagination. Tonight, that music is realised, fully, live and in front of this partisan crowd. Beginning with the evocative “Cold Days From The Birdhouse”, singer James Graham stands in the centre of the stage, in self imposed isolation from the rest of the band. His solitary piercing vocals silence the members of the audience who were talking. When the rest of the band crash in, a wave of music envelopes the crowd and sends shivers down my spine.

The rest of their five song set passes far too quickly. Graham’s twisting, twitching and haunting stage presence captivates as he spews forth his powerful lyrics. His eyes roll back to the point that you think he’s completely lost in the music. Their wall of sound approach amazingly realised with just the four of them and a host of delay peddles. The album is full of dense sounds that build up to create a massive wall of noise. Live, the songs are almost stripped back and given air to breath. “That Summer At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy” rolls around, twitching like an animal in its final death throws. Graham’s vocals at turns beautiful, quiet and then harsh and piercing. He may be “shit at between song chat” but you don’t have to talk when the music is as good as this. As their final song descends into a mountain of feedback and noise, it feels like rolls after rolls of thunder are rippling through the venue and the crowd are left breathless.

Idlewild

After that, Idlewild were going to have to do something very special. Unfortunately, they bottled it. I’ve been a fan of Idlewild from their debut album, and was looking forward to catching them touring some of their “greatest hits” but, tonight, there was something missing. They seem to have distilled all their old angst-driven songs to the lowest common denominator so they now all sound like indie-rock thrashes. There’s little to distinguish between all their numbers. Woomble’s lyrics are lost in a swathe of riff’s and balls-to-the-wall rock. The delicate introspection that made them seems to have been discarded live.

Song’s like “Little Discourage”, “No Emotion” and “Actually It’s Darkness” feel limp and, dare I say it; boring. Woomble looked like he’d rather be anywhere than here, playing these songs. The rest of the band seemed to be enjoying themselves, pulling some Richman-esque moves with their guitars, but it fails to move me. It’s only towards the end of their set do they slightly rescue the evening. “Make Another World”, “A Modern Way of Letting Go” and “I Understand It” break the mould, their indie-rock by-numbers approach broken apart and the inner beauty of their songs shines through. It’s just a shame it was too little too late to help raise the opinion of one of my favourite bands that, sadly, have fallen in my estimation.

Links
The Resistance [myspace]
The Twilight Sad [myspace] [interview] [photos]
Idlewild [myspace] [photos]