The Twang. Love It When I Feel Like This review

ukevents · Joined: 15 Dec 2003 Posts: 1941

The Twang. Love It When I Feel Like This review

Jay Morey

The Twang sound like the filthily produced love child of Black grape, Puressence, Lightning Seeds and The Streets in his more lucid and brilliant moments. I’m a massive fan of Editors, and I bought their new offering the same day as taking as chance on The Twang. Mid-way through Editors I turned them off because they were just too mournful. I popped in The Twang and found myself humming, nodding my head and even laughing at the lyrics of track 3, The Neighbour, a quaint story of fighting with the nasty, lonely and uh-uhm, ‘unsatisfied’, man next door.

They have the basics of a new indie sensation, earthy Northern working class roots, a lack of any fashion style other than ‘I spent three hours in the bookies then hit the chip shop’ and they play a lot of guitars. But also you’ll find some strings over ever so slight dashes of reggae, a hint of The Specials in track 9, Don’t Wait Up, and some heartfelt if at times clumsy lyrics in last hit, Either Way. ‘I gotta find my phone to tell ya’, maybe even write you a love letter.’ just clunked a little, but is soon forgotten with genuine words. ‘ I was getting paranoid about the silliest of stuff.’ Don’t we all? And maybe that’s why they work and stand out from the indie sweeping the nation. I believe in their songs, they’ve spent their time living and put it into their lyrics. It shows in the careful layered production of track 10, Got Me Sussed.

It doesn’t just sound like a good CD, a bit of Saturday night fun in the first half of the album, but somebody’s real life and experiences in amongst the merriment. The final few tracks get more serious, the comedown after the earlier highs. It flows spectacularly well. Especially with final track a bit of jolly fluff to once again lighten the mood. The music itself tricks us into thinking The Twang are happier than they are. Whereas Editors, on first listen at least, want us to believe they are more depressed and ‘Joy Division’ than they actually are. Sometimes reality is more listenable than image.