So, The Twilight Sad releases a little something-something to hold us until a new album, hopefully released this year. Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did is a re-imagining of five tracks off of the magnificent debut album Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters released last year, and a cover of a Daniel Johnston song, ‘Some Things Last A Long Time’. The aspects of their original sound are polarized, the looser tracks that employ more than just a shoegazing guitar are really good and interesting, perhaps more interesting than the droning ambient route they sometimes go down.

What we find with ‘Cold Days From The Birdhouse’ is the band in early Slowdive mode, with more sawing textures and atmospheres than an actual definable song, completely so if it wasn’t for James Graham’s vocal which sits on top of everything. ‘And She Would Darken The Memory’ has soft chiming guitar and a slight drum beat, the vocals are about the same as the original, which is to say belted out in a cathartic manner. With ‘Here It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did’ you seem to hear the sequel to ‘Talking With Fireworks/Here, It Never Snowed’, an anger in the vocals is carried through both songs, with the newer one sounding slightly less tumultuous; insistent drum taps, chimes, (maybe) glockenspiel and accordion drone are at the heart of it. ‘Mapped By What Surrounded Them’ sounds like field recordings of jet engines played underwater, Graham’s voice is at its most melodic, and that accordion is there again. ‘Walking For Two Hours’ is somehow less immediate than the original, the song is pulled apart into a looser structure, jingling bells and some subtle guitar, and it isn’t quite as successful as the other tracks here, but maybe I say that because the original version is my favourite song by the band. I’m not familiar with any of Daniel Johnston’s work, but ‘Some Things Last A Long Time’ sounds like a heartbreaking song, Graham gets into the heart of the lyrics well, while the band play it like a Twilight Sad song, albeit one of their looser and almost lighter styled tracks.

It’s hard to say whether or not the band will follow the template set on this EP. One of the most noteworthy things is the prominence of the accordion, it threads through and stitches up everything into a thematic whole, and I think I would quite like to hear the band changing their sonic palette this way in the future. In any case, a cool little EP that anyone who likes the band will get a lot out of.
80%

Links
The Twilight Sad [myspace] [record label]