3-part video series of the recent Wavves / Ganglians / Alex Bleeker show at Santos Party House, shot by the extraordinary Ray Concepcion

Nic ShonfeldI’ve described – in spirit, if not precise words – The Twilight Sad’s debut album Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters as a sonically monolithic slab of angst, a crescendo sustained over 40 minutes, the sound of a man standing on a Scottish cliff face, arms raised and bellowing against the world. And also one of my favourite records of 2007.

Needless to say, the follow-up was anxiously awaited and though the release of a couple EPs and a collection of live tracks and rarities certainly helped make that wait bearable, that material also came largely from the timeframe of the debut. Which was fine, but didn’t really help answer the question of what sort of direction the band would take for album number two, because as much as I liked the debut, duplicating that recipe almost certainly wouldn’t work again, or at least yield greatly diminished returns and I believed them to be capable of so much more.

And while their set opening up for Mogwai back in May offered a tantalizing preview of the new material, only proper listens to Forget The Night Ahead prove that faith to be justified. With it, the band have largely managed to maintain the immensity of sound that defined Autumns, but have shed enough sonic and emotional weight to be more nimble, more dynamic. And in doing so, the Twilight Sad have opened up space for James Graham’s more sophisticated songwriting to come to the fore. Whereas the lyrics on Autumns were more on the impenetrably abstract side, Night is more evocative in imagery, almost cinematic, and less opaque while remaining sufficiently inscrutability. And glum and depressed as hell. That’s crucial.

Obviously Night doesn’t offer quite the same gut punch of discovery that Autumns – it can’t – but it may well be the superior record. That’s a subjective call, but it does prove that The Twilight Sad have more than one trick in their arsenal, or they’ve figured out how to get even more mileage out of that one. Either way, consider the sophomore slump evaded and The Twilight Sad a band to hopefully soundtrack many more nights of sitting in a dark corner, rocking gently back and forth.

The Twilight Sad are entering the second half of a North American tour that brings them to the El Mocambo on October 10. Exclaim piggybacked a short interview with Graham onto their review of the record and Clash solicited a song-by-song annotation from the band to go with their stream of the album.

MP3: The Twilight Sad – “Reflection Of The Television”
Video: The Twilight Sad – “I Became A Prostitute”
Stream: The Twilight Sad / Forget The Night Ahead
MySpace: The Twilight Sad

Also currently streaming is Richard Hawley’s new one Truelove’s Gutter. It’s excellent. In case you were wondering. There’s interviews at The Chester Chronicle and Shields Gazette and Clash asks him how he’d spend his last day on Earth.

Stream: Richard Hawley / Truelove’s Gutter

JAM and Metro talk to Arctic Monkeys. The band also stopped in for a session at MPR.

Check out the third single from former Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall’s forthcoming solo record Without Why, due out next year. I know that the point of pre-release singles is to build anticipation for the record, but in this case it’s working especially well – all three so far have been quite great.

MP3: Rose Elinor Dougall – “Fallen Over”

Music Snobbery and The Derby Telegraph interview Noah & The Whale, whose First Days Of Spring will be out in North America on October 6 and who play the Horseshoe on October 31. The album is also currently streaming at NPR.

Stream: Noah & The Whale / First Days Of Spring

Exclaim and Out interview Little Boots.

Alasdair MacLean discusses The Clientele’s new record Bonfires On The Heath with Spinner and Exclaim while multi-instrumentalist Mel Draisey talks to Rocksellout. The album is out October 6.

BBC gets a status update from The Futureheads on their next record.

The San Francisco Examiner, Pioneer Press and The Georgia Straight welcome Manic Street Preachers to North America for their first tour in a decade. Need I mention how stoked I am for this Sunday’s show at the Phoenix?

Remember when Blur who was saying that their reunion might yield more shows or an album? Not anymore. Alas. But hey, he has a new solo video. Which is almost as good. Almost.

Video: Graham Coxon – “Dead Bees”

BBC and Spinner talk to Ian Brown about his new record My Way. Exclaim also reports that he’s working with Johnny Marr on a television soundtrack.

Rolling Stone and Interview talk to Bad Lieutenant’s Bernard Sumner.

Of Montreal – At Fashion Week 2009

Stream the upcoming SCORE: The Remixes release from Merge (featuring some out-there covers of classic Merge tracks), and don’t forget to pre-order it while you’re there!

Jonathan TaggartSaying I was a bit award-ed out following last week’s Polaris Prize gala would be something of an understatement, so the ceremonies for the Verge XM Awards the following night were largely ignored around these parts. But that doesn’t mean the results weren’t of interest – okay, Alexisonfire winning album of the year was of zero interest, but the declaration of Vancouver’s Dan Mangan as artist of the year certainly drew a double-take. This response had nothing to do with Mangan or his work, simply the fact that it’s a pretty heady honour to bestow on someone who’d only released his new album Nice, Nice, Very Nice a little over a month prior, though that was preceded by the Roboteering EP in the Spring. The whys and wherefores of that do interest me, but we’ll set that aside for now and just consider the record.

And it’s a good one.

MP3: Dan Mangan – “Road Regrets”
Video: Dan Mangan – “The Indie Queens Are Waiting”

As promised, Sloan are giving away a new song. “Take It Upon Yourself” is a Chris song that sounds like a Jay song (it’s the piano) and is available for frees in exchange for your email address.

Forest City Lovers have completed their first 7″ single, available to pre-order now in advance of its November 10 release. Something to hold you over until they release album number three next year.

Portions of the Caribou Vibration Ensemble performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties NY have been made available to stream or download at the Free Music Archive, with word that a full live album may be forthcoming. The Toronto show was amazing – I expect this was nothing less.

MP3: The Caribou Vibration Ensemble – “Skunks”
MP3: The Caribou Vibration Ensemble – “Barnowl”
MP3: The Caribou Vibration Ensemble – “Brahminy Kite”
MP3: The Caribou Vibration Ensemble – “A Final Warning”

NPR has a World Cafe session with The Jayhawks.

Spinner has another video taken from the forthcoming live R.E.M. album Live At The Olympia, out October 27.

Video: R.E.M. – “Man-Sized Wreath” (live)

Long-time R.E.M. sideman and once-and-future Posie Ken Stringfellow has a new band of Norwegians called The Disciplines. It’s got a garage-ish bent, but there’s no suppressing Stringfellow’s canny pop sensibilities.

Video: The Disciplines – “Best Mistake”
Video: The Disciplines – “Yours For The Taking (Smoking Kills)”

AZCentral talks to the other principal in the Posies, Jon Auer.

City Pages Q&A’s Built To Spill.

Epigram Music talks to Sufjan Stevens about his BQE project, out October 20.

St Vincent’s Annice clark talks to Radar Online about her contribution to the soundtrack to New Moon, which I’m content to know nothing about save for one of the protagonists sparkles. Clark also gives an interview to The Vanguard.

Teenage Lovers – “Number One” Teenage Lovers is the side-band of Max McMillen of The Smith Westerns, and this track is the A-side from a new 7″ on Randy Records.

(via Transparent and Rose Quartz)