“I don't think we performed anything off Fourteen Autumns
& Fifteen Winters at our first two gigs, we just played some instrumental
songs and a Daniel Johnston cover,” says The Twilight Sad frontman James
Graham. It’s been just over 10 years since the band played their inaugural shows
at the 13th Note and so he can be forgiven for being slightly hazy on the
night’s finer details. “I'm trying to think what I actually did at those first
two gigs as I only had one song to sing in the set. I probably went to the bar
or played about with a pedal or something. I remember after those two gigs we
wrote four songs and they made up the demo CD that we sent down to Fatcat Records.
Fatcat wanted to see us play and asked if we had an upcoming gig, we didn't, so
we arranged one at The Barfly. I think we played ‘That Summer at Home, I Had
Become the Invisible Boy’ and ‘And She Would Darken The Memory’ at that gig,
they signed us soon after that and we went into the studio to record Fourteen
Autumns & Fifteen Winters.”
In the time that’s followed the band has released four
albums, navigated several line-up changes, played with the likes of the
Smashing Pumpkins and found success on both an international and domestic
front. Along with the likes of Frightened Rabbit and Admiral Fallow, they are
viewed as one of the cornerstones of contemporary Scottish indie – the boys
from the tiny town of Kilsyth who took on the world and done good. When groups
get caught up in the maelstrom of travelling and playing shows, recording new
material and entertaining seemingly endless PR, the actual band experience
itself can be in danger of passing them by, but with a re-issue of their debut
album, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen
Winters imminent, as well as a special series of live shows where they will
perform it in its entirety to mark Record Store Day 2014, The Twilight Sad find
themselves at a reflective juncture.
“If I could go back to that time and give myself some advice
I'd tell myself to enjoy it more and not be so worried about things,” says
Graham. “I'm a worrier. Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed ourselves, just ask
anyone who was around us or was on tour with us at that time. We perhaps enjoyed
ourselves a little but too much but we were young. We didn't have a lot of
money and were living off the £10 or $10 we got each day on tour (we still are
to be honest). I think that’s what made it fun and a great experience.
“The part I wish I had enjoyed more was playing live. I
wasn't too comfortable onstage as I hadn't spent a lot of time being a singer
in a band or playing gigs before we went on tour to support the record. Now I
love it and miss it when we're not on tour.”
So what was the most exciting thing about that period? It’s
the veritable stuff of dreams to go from living in a sleepy town with a
populous of just over 10,000 to travelling the world and playing sold out UK
dates with the likes of the Manic Street Preachers.
“Everything was so exciting and new to us at that time,”
continues James. “We got to visit and play in countries we'd never been to
before, we got to meet musicians that we grew up listening to and really
respected. We got to meet new people around the world. We worked really hard
the year the record came out on a shoe string budget. I think we played 160-180
gigs in 360 days over two continents. It was all amazing.”
What is interesting is the evident fondness Graham still
harbours for that nascent period. With some bands there is a tendency to
dismiss (in some cases even disown) the labour of their early days which is
borne from a sort of deprecating candour where there is regret at the naivety
of how they approached their new found status both from a lifestyle as well as
a musical perspective. Tastes and influences become more nuanced and the
incendiary album cover that may have seemed edgy at first may now just look
lame – likewise, a more refined ear may find the key change that at the time
seemed ambitious nothing less than horridly bombastic. Bands such as The
Horrors abstain from playing any of their early material in a live environment,
whereas Damon Albarn of Blur went as far as calling their debut record,
Leisure, “awful”. Graham, however, still harbors a fondness for Fourteen
Autumns & Fifteen Winters, despite the band’s obvious maturity.
“We are still proud of [the album] but to be honest we're
proud of everything we've released,” Graham declares. “Otherwise we wouldn't
have put it out there. You only get one chance at making your debut record and
we were very young and naive but at the same time knew what kind of record we
wanted to make.
“We were just friends who wanted to make a record that we
liked and didn't know or care about what anyone else thought about it. I think
that ultimately benefited the record. The songs on our debut were the first I
ever wrote so they'll always be special to me, I think it is a special record
and I'm very proud of it.”
FAFW seems to not only serve as the band’s debut album, but
almost as a timestamp for their younger days when they stood between Kilsyth
and the rest of the world wrought feral with excitement at the adventure they
were standing on the cusp of. “I actually really enjoyed revisiting it,” adds
Graham. “I made a rule with myself that I would never listen to one of our
records after it was released. I basically want to move on to the next thing
once we are all happy with any record we make. So playing FAFW in full forced
me to go back and listen to the record - I'd forgotten some of the songs we haven't
played for a long time.”
“As soon as I pressed play and started listening to it, I
was pretty much transported back to the time when I was writing and living out
these songs. It made me realise I'm not too different from that 21 year old who
wrote those songs, and how proud of us I am that we were able to document that
period of our lives and get it down on record. It brought back both sad and
happy memories.
“We spent five or six days tracking it in Scotland and then a week or so mixing it in America with Peter Katis.I might be wrong about that actually, it might have been a shorter period of time - my memory is a bit hazy. We basically just went into the studio and rattled it out. We had no previous experience of working in a recording studio. We have Paul Savage to thank for that, he made us feel at home as soon as we got into the studio and he was a pleasure to work with.”
Serving as proof of how far the band has come, not least
musically, was last year’s extraordinary show at the Paisley Abbey where they
were accompanied by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Early favourites
like “That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy” were taken to new
heights with the addition of Herculean violin and double bass crescendos; a
fearsome sound allied to the church acoustics as they intensified and lent an
even darker tone to Graham’s plaintive, soi dissant vocal. The gig felt like
the zenith of the bands journey thus far; seeing them confidently stood to such
a monolithic backdrop - their songs gilded by the orchestra and exalted by the
gravitas of the surrounding. Graham, however, maintains that despite such
elevated technicalities, not much has changed from their original process of
song-writing.
“The way we do it is not too different now. The only
difference is with technology. For example, being able to send each other ideas
over the internet speeds up the songwriting process a lot. Andy sends me some
music and then I record vocal/lyrical ideas and send them over to him. Then we
build up the song from there. The only real difference I'd say is that I can
record all my parts at my house instead of having to go over to Andy's to
record, which would be pretty hard as he now lives in London.” Again reiterating
their desire to stay true to the original source material, he dismisses any
notion of tweaking. “We will just perform the songs the way we usually would,
to be honest. Actually we probably arranged the songs to be closer to the
original version on the record.
“We didn't have a keyboard player when we first started and
now that Brendan plays keys with us he can now play all the piano and accordion
parts when we play live. For example we never used to play the repetitive piano
note at the start of the ‘Cold Days from the Birdhouse’ before, but now we’ll
probably perform it with keys from now on.”
Currently holed up recording at Mogwai’s mysterious “Castle
of Doom” studios, the reissue business is proving a lighter bookend to the more
serious issue of recording the latest, 4th LP. Recording is done and the album
is just waiting to be mixed. It’s clear Graham still hasn’t lost any of the elan
that went into the process of FAFW.
“We went into The Castle of Doom at the start of the year,
for three weeks and tracked the record. At this point the record is just
waiting to be mixed. It’s been good to have a wee break between recording and
mixing. We had to wait until the person we wanted to mix the record was
available and in the meantime Andy and I have been working on some of the
little special things within the record. We're going to record a couple of
those wee things soon before the record gets mixed. I'm excited about our new
songs, just as excited as I was we when recorded FAFW. It’s a massive record
for us, you never know how long you’re going to last in this industry and we've
put everything into these new songs, so we want to prove to everyone that
there's a reason we're still here and hopefully we can break through all the
shite that's out there and be given the chance to introduce these songs to as
many people as possible. This band means everything to me. These songs, old and
new, mean everything to me.”
The old aphorism of having to look back before you can look
forward maybe best sums up the position that the band find themselves at the
moment, with them caught between the old and new. After a quiet 2013, it’s a
period Graham is embracing, starting with Record Store Day 2014, an endeavour
that is clearly close to his heart. “I love it. As far as Scotland goes I like
Mono, Love Music, Avalanche and Vox Box in Edinburgh and Europa Music in
Stirling. I was gutted when 1Up in Aberdeen shut. I loved that record store.
England has some great record shops as well, Rough Trade in London, Jumbo
Records in Leeds, Pie & Vinyl in Portsmouth, Sound it Out in the North
East, Resident in Brighton, Spillars in Cardiff, Rise in Bristol. I try to go to
the local record shop every time we're in a town with a local record store.”
And his favourite purchases? I got the 10th Anniversary Edition of Interpol's
"Turn on the bright lights" which is one of my favourite records.
Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat's "Everythings Getting Older" sounds
beautiful on Vinyl, I've got every Smith's record on Vinyl and I've got the
original pressing of "Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters" by
us.”
