It’s the Long Goodbye by The Twilight Sad (Review)

In recent years, my wife and I have both become starkly aware of our parents’ aging as we’ve cared for them through various health concerns and emergencies. And it’s not just us; several close friends have had similar experiences. This may just be the stage of life in which we all now find ourselves. Nevertheless, it’s sobering to realize that you’re now caring for the same people who brought you into this world, a reversal of roles that might have been inevitable but was still unforeseen and unimaginable.

The Twilight Sad’s It’s the Long Goodbye emerges from a similar space. In a recent interview with Treble’s Rob Duguay, singer James Graham explained how the title of his band’s sixth album was inspired by the decline and eventual death of his mother following the onset of dementia. During that tumultuous time, Graham became a father himself and experienced his own mental health issues. “It really does sum up the seven years where I said goodbye to my mom,” he said, “along with saying goodbye to my brain at one point.”

Not surprisingly, It’s the Long Goodbye is a tumultuous album. Then again, one doesn’t expect anything quiet or subdued from The Twilight Sad. Ever since their self-titled 2006 EP, the Scottish band has excelled at producing, as one critic put it, a “cathartic racket,” blending My Bloody Valentine-esque squalls and swells with Graham’s pointed and confessional lyrics. But I daresay that the band has never been so cathartic as they are on these ten songs.

Unlike Sufjan Stevens, whose grief over his own mother’s death led to 2015’s heartbreaking Carrie and Lowell, Graham doesn’t use intricate storytelling to communicate his grief and confusion. Rather, he latches onto single, simple phrases that he repeats like a mantra that grows increasingly distressed with each repetition until it hits like an emotional sledgehammer.

“Why are you leaving me? Why are you slowly leaving me?” is the constant refrain throughout album opener “Get Away From It All,” which concludes with Graham crying out “And I’m the son you know” and “You’re my mother” — a defiant attempt in those last seconds to reaffirm what’s true even as time and dementia tries to steal it away. The chorus of “Designed to Lose” is just Graham plaintively repeating “Are we playing dead in my head?” before intoning “No, this can’t happen to you/I won’t let this happen to you.” Finally, album closer “TV People Still Throwing TVs at People” finds Graham working himself into a frenzy as he sings “No, I don’t wanna feel this way/Is it okay you feel this way?”

While many of the songs on It’s the Long Goodbye are from Graham’s perspective, “Waiting For the Phone Call” shifts that around, placing us in the mind of a woman watching her family watch her die: “There’s a pain in me no one can see/Gather ’round and come die with me/Watch me die.” That said, it’s worth noting that many of the album’s lyrics work as a description of both Graham’s decline and his mother’s; his line about a pain that no one else sees could just as easily describe the demons in one’s own head. That’s certainly the case on “The Ceiling Underground,” where Graham questions reality (“Why does it feel like this?/Why does it feel like nothing is real?”) before surrendering to his own confusion (“Can you hear me underground?/I tried to not scream and shout/My body doesn’t know how/It’s better if I’m not found”).

Graham’s Scottish burr adds an extra layer of emotion to his lyrics, communicating all on its own rage and frustration one moment, gentle care the next, and desperate pleading the one after that. Meanwhile, bandmate Andy MacFarlane creates an appropriately riotous wall of sound from his Jazzmaster and what I can only assume is a stack of amps the size of a barn, particularly on “Designed to Lose,” “Dead Flowers,” and the closing minutes of “TV People Still Throwing TVs at People.”

Don’t be surprised if parts of It’s the Long Goodbye sound Cure-ish, like centerpiece “Dead Flowers,” which evokes both Pornography’s chill and Disintegration’s majesty, or the jagged riffs on “Inhospitable/Hospital.” The Twilight Sad have frequently toured with The Cure — they delivered a stunning opening performance when we saw The Cure back in 2023 — and Robert Smith has become something of a mentor for the band, even going so far as to describe them as “the best band playing the best songs.” It’s only natural, then, for Smith to contribute his inimitable playing to three of the album’s songs, which dovetails quite well with Graham and MacFarlane’s style.

Fortunately, Graham is in a better place now, due in part to pushing through and completing It’s the Long Goodbye. “I actually look back on that time with pride because I did it, I got it out of myself and just the fact that this record exists is a win for me personally,” said Graham in the aforementioned Treble interview. He even goes so far as to call It’s the Long Goodbye his “defining record.” That’s a lofty statement, but the sentiment is well-deserved. After 20 years of acclaimed releases, James Graham and Andy MacFarlane have delivered their masterpiece — an album that, for all of the grief and suffering that it contains, feels vital, inspired, and triumphant.