The Edinburgh indie faithful descended on the colourful environs of Electric Circus last Sunday evening, lured by the prospect of a rare acoustic set by The Twilight Sad. Adam Stafford opened the evening with a set of experimental songs constructed from guitar and vocal loops. R.M. Hubbert’s flamenco-tinged acoustic guitar came next, his instrumental pieces redolent of melancholy summer nights and loss.
At ten past nine The Twilight Sad sauntered onstage to a sold-out crowd and opened with “That Summer, At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy”. Andy MacFarlane’s spare fingerpicked acoustic guitar and Mark Devine’s wheezy accordion proved that the band’s songs retain their peculiar beauty even when shorn of their trademark effects and distortion.
And then there’s that Voice. Watching James Graham sing is to witness emotion in the raw. He closes his eyes and wrings the life out of his microphone, alternately crooning and hollering, his voice an unstoppable force of nature. Between songs he wipes his brow and stares into the middle distance as though overwhelmed by his own passion. A sip of wine, a spot of self-deprecating banter (“We’re surprised so many came along to see an acoustic set. We hate doing them. Just kidding”) then we’re plunged into the next song.
The set brought a well-paced mixture of old and newer songs, with “The Room” and “Mapped By What Surrounded Them” particular highlights for this here reviewer. We got haunting covers of Depeche Mode, The Cure and The Wedding Present tracks, but nothing by The Smiths as “Morrissey’s been acting like a bit of a dick recently”. Every song had the crowd singing in hushed, reverential whispers. A crowd-led rendition of “Cold Days At The Birdhouse” closed the set, and all too soon it was over. I headed for the bus in time for an early night, lamenting the end of a summer spent wasting. What a way to finish, though.
Setlist:
- That Summer, At Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy
- The Wrong Car
- Enjoy the Silence (Depeche Mode)
- I Became A Prostitute
- Walking for Two Hours
- The Room
- In Between Days (The Cure)
- Mapped By What Surrounded Them
- Suck (The Wedding Present)
- And She Would Darken the Memory
- Cold Days At The Birdhouse
