REVIEW: The Twilight Sad - It's the Long Goodbye

A necessary, if not fully successful, return from a great act

48:52 // March 27, 2026 // Rock Action

Releasing a debut masterpiece is undoubtedly a feather in the cap for a band, but also a heavy burden, especially when it seems likely that their first go-around will never be topped. The Twilight Sad are, at this point, clear recipients of that questionable prize - 2007’s Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters’ captivating blend of shoegaze, post-rock, and indie rock, complete with its tragicomic tone and rich atmosphere, set a standard nearly impossible to recapture. Well over fourteen autumns and fifteen winters later, it still stands as one of the finer records of the 21st century so far.

The band has since pumped out a laudable discography, with each of their subsequent LPs touching greatness, and most earning the title of “excellent” in my final analysis, but that initial font of magic has never quite been recaptured. The key factor in that, I think, is that the chilly melancholy and brittle emotionality of their first full-length transformed over time into a pervasive sense of gloom, and while the band fared well as dour bards serenading us with depressive tunes, later works never quite inherited the depth or grandeur which they’d originally possessed.

All that leads us to now, when I find myself writing about The Twilight Sad’s sixth album, seven years removed from their previous effort, It Won/t Be Like This All the Time, which was perhaps the group’s most straightforward and immediate indie/alt-rock effort. That intervening span might be an eternity in musical terms, but return It’s the Long Goodbye feels less changed than you might expect - the contours of the soundscape here are broadly familiar, and the mood reads just as cheerless.

Indeed, a hint of stagnancy can be detected this time around. The Twilight Sad have their style down pat at this point (and it’s a wonderful style), but the ten songs here do little to elevate that already successful formula. There are some differences from previous work (more on that later), but they don’t quite do enough to fully satisfy. This isn’t to say that the group’s trademark strengths aren’t still formidable, and even seismic at times - James Graham’s vocals provide an essential, evocative moodiness to the table, and Andy MacFarlane’s guitar arrangements deliver up a primal furor - but most of this material doesn’t quite feel like top-shelf vintage amid the band’s repertoire. In particular, I think it’s the hooks that don’t quite sink in - after a dozen listens or so, I still find myself primarily identifying these tracks in relation to one another, rather than remembering a given song based a moment when it reliably gets stuck in my head, or better yet, grabs hold and sinks into my soul. “Designed to Lose” is a gentler counterpart to “Attempt a Crash Landing - Theme”, and the bleak feeling of “Inhospitable/HospitaL” pairs nicely with the smoother, melodic “Chestwound to the Chest”, and the album is both quality and well-balanced, but my inability to recall individual tracks on their own merits seems to suggest a lack of deep resonance. In short, It’s the Long Goodbye is a strong album which is easy to appreciate, but it doesn’t move me in the way you might hope.

Once the album is put into greater context, that statement makes me feel rather heartless. The themes of this record rely heavily on Graham’s experiences surrounding the diagnosis of his mother with dementia, her subsequent decline, and eventual death. That the subject matter is harrowing is an understatement, and clearly informs the ways in which this album does manage to stand out a bit from previous The Twilight Sad efforts. Most notably, this is a heavier album than the band has released in a while, perhaps ever, and the lyricism is more stark and direct than usual. This sonic bombast is significant - the climax of a track like “Dead Flowers” feels absolutely monumental, and if you spliced a moment from various instrumental segments of these tracks and played it for an unsuspecting bystander, they may well guess that you were listening to a metal-adjacent band. Meanwhile, Graham’s choice of lines is deliberately straightforward here - baring his soul on “Back to Fourteen” and pleading over and over “I don’t wanna feel this way” on closer “TV People Still Throwing TVs and People” (the album is released on Mogwai’s label Rock Action, and Mogwai’s ummm, particular song title aesthetic seems to be rubbing off). All that’s to say that The Twilight Sad’s singer and lyricist has gone through the ringer since their last album, and this latest attempt aims for an emotional heavy-hitter. Sometimes all there is to do is sing into the void over loud guitars - it’s a deeply human impulse, and I quite respect it.

Still, though, as much as I’d like to say otherwise, It’s the Long Goodbye, exceptionally poignant title and all, slots in as a slightly weaker release from one of the most reliable purveyors of indie rock in recent decades. The songs here flirt with a level of aggression not typically seen from these fellows, but the end result feels a touch tired. Lyrically, too, for my preferences the repeated, simple turns of phrase which take center stage here overshoot the mark - I find the openness admirable, but the sentiments don’t always resonate the way one might hope. All told, I quite enjoy It’s the Long Goodbye, if “enjoy” isn’t too callous of a word to use about a piece of art hewn out of tremendous grief. This is taut, well-crafted songcraft from a band which never writes a bad song, it just doesn’t quite excite, or give me chills. All in all, there’s no doubt it’s good to have The Twilight Sad back and making new music, and hey, I’ll always have Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters to keep me company and get me in my feelings over a beverage on a blustery evening.

7.5/10