Brighten The Corners Presents Scottish alternative rock band Twin Atlantic on Saturday 18th November at The Baths. Support comes from Ryan Redwood.
“The band’s weirdest, funniest and most appealing release to date.” - NME
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Time: 7.30pm - 11pm
Venue: The Baths, Ipswich
Tickets: £25 adv
Supports: TBA
Age Restrictions: 14+ (14- 15s must be accompanied by an adult) -
Transparency is Twin Atlantic as you’ve never known them. Ten candid, funny, funky songs find frontman Sam McTrusty spilling his guts on everything from marriage, male friendship and the absurdity of social media to parenthood, medication and his mum.
Written in strained circumstances and recorded remotely with Sam’s mate and mentor Jacknife Lee (U2, The Killers, Taylor Swift). Transparency arrived more by accident than design, an experiment that snowballed when the world went in to lockdown last spring. Only when eight songs were completed did the pair accept that an album was underway.
“I barely remember making the music,” says Sam. “That sounds ridiculous, but it was a ridiculous time. I was a new dad, isolating at home in a heatwave because my wife, a nurse, was working on Covid wards. A year of touring turned to dust. I existed for months on two hours sleep a day, having already made myself ill with stress trying to write a new album just as our last one came out. Somehow, from the midst of that chaos came these songs.”
Sent home to Glasgow mid-UK tour last March, Twin Atlantic were already close to completing the planned follow-up to POWER, their fifth album and first for a major label, which reached No.11 on its release last January. Sessions with L.A.-based Jacknife had been scheduled for the summer, when Twin Atlantic should have been touring the States.
“My knee-jerk reaction was to block out the fact that the world might be ending by working on new music,” says Sam. “I messaged Jacknife, expecting him to be too busy. He said all of his work had been cancelled and how about jumping on FaceTime that night.”
The vague plan was to write one song. Instead, the two talked for hours, becoming each other’s crutch in a crisis. Mostly, they joked and told stories, prompting Jacknife to ask why Sam didn’t write lyrics the same way he spoke.
“He told me to imagine seeing someone across the street keying my car,” says Sam. “What I shouted back became the opening of a chorus. I began reeling off anything on my mind in the way I would talking to my mates. By 4am, we had One Man Party. Essentially, it’s me having a meltdown”
Medicine, mimosas, panic attacks, a split personality having a party, the lyrics more spoken than sung, set to frantic beats, squally guitars and sleazy synths, the aptly-titled track and soon-to-be single sounded nothing like Twin Atlantic. Still, making it had been a blast for both.