Here’s a no-brainer: We love The Twilight Sad here at the site (specially the Frog and his Pals, as you can see from the illustration by our pal Miller) and The Wrong Car 12″ has blown our socks off all the way back to the shop we nicked them from (a goal in life complete, I guess).

We decided to send the band a couple of questions by email, which were answered by James (vocals) and Andy (guitar). We’ve already interviewed them in July, after their show in Tramlines, and now the time was ripe for a spot of catch up…

First of all, thanks for the interview in July, really had fun (and confirmed that Buckfast is an underrated drink). Really enjoyed The Wrong Car (the song) and the video. Enough rambling, questions.

You’ve finished your recent tour with Errors, a pairing that raised a few eyebrows (pizza and ice cream, said a mate of mine). How was the response from your audience to Errors, and, likewise, the response of Errors’ fans to you?

James Graham: Overall, both bands got good responses. We are very different bands in the way we sound, but I would like to think that people who came to the shows understood and enjoyed both bands. I think we all knew that some people would be coming to see us and some people to see them, but it was an opportunity for both of us to play to people who wouldn’t normally come and see us.

The two remixes in The Wrong Car are strange, but can’t help revisiting them (especially ‘Reflection of the television’). Are you planning to be more electronic in your next album, continuing your m.o. of evolving all the time?

James Graham: We’re just finishing off the demos just now and the sound of the songs are definitely different to our previous albums/EP’s. I wouldn’t say that we are turning into Daft Punk or anything or that we now sound like those remixes. It’s still definitely The Twilight Sad, but we wanted to move on from our previous work and try new things and I’m really excited about the direction the band’s headed.

On that subject, how’s the new album coming along?

James Graham: We’re booking the studio and sorting out the producer at the moment. It should all be done and dusted by early next year. The label is pretty excited and so are we. We’ll be trying out some of the new songs on the Mogwai tour in February.

One for Andy: what’s your favourite pedal?

Andy MacFarlane: I don’t really have a favourite. I still like using my Rat pedal for the basic sound, but then I run that through more. I just picked up a few pedals from Dwarfcraft and T.Rex recently that I’m playing around with at the minute.

We’ve been stalki…erm, following you on Twitter and we’ve checked out the unplugged sessions James and Andy have been doing in several radio shows and websites. Do you plan to do another bit of alternate sessions like Here it never snowed, afterwards it did?

James Graham: I don’t think we’ll ever do a release like “Here It Never Snowed, Afterwards it did” again. We’re really proud of that EP but we don’t want to repeat ourselves. The songs on the first two records suited being stripped back as well as full on noise, but with next record, who knows? We’ll see what songs suit that kind of stripped back feel and see if we can do something different with them instead of maybe just acoustic guitar and vocals for stripped back sessions, etc.

The video for ‘The Wrong Car’ is quite memorable. How did all these collaborations with Nicola Collins came about?

James Graham: Nicola got in touch with FatCat, saying she liked the band, I think, and we all really liked her documentary “The End” so both agreed it would be cool to work with each other and Nicola came up with a treatment for our song ‘The Room‘ and we arranged to meet up when we were in Los Angeles on one of our American tours and we filmed our part in the video in the Hollywood Hills which were pretty crazy/cool for a bunch of dour faced Scots from Glasgow.

We then needed a video for “The Wrong Car” and Nicola was kind enough to help us out again and produced a really cool video with a creepy Ginger puppet, which I like to call “Davy”! Nicola’s been great to work with and we’re really proud of the videos she’s created for us and hopefully she’s up for working with us again.

One for James: “You won, ok? This is just a game!” (aka: ready for Tron 2.0?)

James Graham: I just want to see it! I’m fed up of watching the trailer every day and hearing snippets from the soundtrack that leak each week. I’ve got my ticket booked for the Imax and it better not disappoint or I’m gonna hunt them down and tell them that they are dicks!

Any chance for the lyrics for ‘Throw yourself in the water’ to be available in the future? From that intro lines, we loved it. (we do enjoy salsa dancing over graves. No complaints from the tennants)

James Graham: Eh, I’m not sure. I’m a bit of a lazy bastard but I think I’ve already done it, so I’ll fish through my emails and see if I can find it. You should still sing that intro line though as it’s probably better than the pish I wrote!

Thanks for your time! Good luck with the tour with Mogwai!

James Graham: No bother, thanks for you kind words and hopefully see you on the tour in February.

Questions: —Sam

Answers: James Graham & Andy MacFarlane from The Twilight Sad

 

Drawing: Miller.

Colours: Alivon.

The author would like to thank Ash Dosanjh for the incredible help!

Links

The Twilight Sad

Website. Myspace. Last.fm. Facebook. Spotify. Check Davy’s starring role video. Acoustic videos (And she would darken the memory, The Wrong car)