It Won't Be Like This All the Time

This is still the band we fell in love with over a decade ago: confessional, honest, enthralling. It's just that this time out they're sleeker and sharper than before.

It Won/t Be Like This All the Time (IWBLTATT) is another dauntless step forward, unflinchingly embracing the core aspects of their sound, while boldly incorporating loftier ideas. It is not some grandiose attempt at a knockout punch or some cheap leap at the mainstream; you cannot fake sentiment, or force people to feel something. IWBLTATT is a laser guided arrow to the heart; an enveloping noise that chips away at you over time.

While it’s a stretch to describe the record as ‘poppy’, it’s certainly their most accessible material to date, with songs like The Arbor, Videograms and Let’s Get Lost taking up residence in the head long after the record has stopped playing. ... It may be only January, but there’s already been a place filled on that Best Albums Of 2019 list.

It Won/t Be Like This All the Time should be the record to finally see them breakthrough into the wider consciousness of the listening public. It certainly deserves to be.

It Won/t Be Like This All the Time is like all of us. It's bruised, lonely, confused yet hopeful. It feels more important than a collection of songs on a spinning disc. It's a balm, a hand to hold and a kick up the arse. It's the album the Twilight Sad have always been destined to make, and it's the album fans have always known they would make.

They continue to plough the same furrow as on their previous albums, yet with a little more urgency, consistency and richness that some of their earlier work lacked. There is a simplicity here, both in terms of lyrical content and musicality.

This is their most listenable album, one that dials back the heavy-handed metaphors and overwhelming musical gloom for something more danceable and upbeat, though still dour as ever lyrically.

Rather than being owned by their demons, The Twilight Sad have created an 11-track exorcism to master them. It’s a full-bodied and inescapable mood-piece, and a visceral account of their victory in the fight to exist. We should feel grateful to have them.

As it acknowledges current hardships and allow the tiniest glimmer of hope for tomorrow, It Won't Be Like This All the Time proves the Twilight Sad are making some of their most vital music more than a decade into their career.

There’s certainly nothing new about their sound and fury and throbbing basslines--they fit comfortably into a lineage stretching from the Cure and the Chameleons to the Killers and White Lies--but they have timeless, high-quality songs. The new ones are more direct and--potentially impacted by the death of their close friend, Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison--more impassioned.

Their fifth album is anchored by thudding, motorik beats that create a dancier base on which James exorcises his deepest demons, and it’s an even more intense form of communication.

While these tracks have definitely been soaked in the dour euphoria that The Cure specialise in, The Twilight Sad are very much their own band. [Feb 2019, p.116]