It’s instructive that The Twilight Sad’s first album since reducing to founding duo James Graham and Andy MacFarlane yields the most powerful version of the band’s cathartic soundworld. Perhaps the subject matter helped: It’s The Long Goodbye documents Graham losing his mother to dementia while simultaneously becoming a father, a real-life crossroads detailed with unsettling candour from the first line of the opening song (“And we slowly watch you go”).
To counterpoint the singer’s mournful Scots folk timbre, MacFarlane’s euphoric post-punk schemes roughen the shiny patina of 2019’s It Won’t Be Like This All the Time for a transcendent blend of New Order, My Bloody Valentine and, inevitably, The Cure. He’s previously covered…

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