Longevity in rock and roll is a dwindling idea and as the lifespan of bands shortens every year, saying goodbye to an act is becoming less and less of a pain to bare, even so for the bands themselves. Twin Atlantic said goodbye to 'Great Divide' with a sold out show at the SSE Hydro, the holy grail of Scottish venues and a highly revered position for any band to find themselves in. With this big finale and the curtains closed for another year, what the future held for Twin Atlantic was as much of a curiosity to the band as it was to the public.
Creating a fourth record is a demanding task, a defining moment that decides how an act will be remembered rather than how they came to be. With the announcement of ‘GLA’, Twin Atlantic’s follow up to ‘Great Divide’, came coded messages, hooded figures and distorted guitar tones calling from a distance. These puzzling messages materialised in a snippet of ‘Gold Elephant: Cherry Alligator’, a moody offering of raw rock and roll, a true breathe of fresh air.
‘Great Divide’ saw the band as a regular Radio One act, headlining the second stage at T In The Park and playing to bigger crowds than ever. Was this something hard to say goodbye to? “Not really.” McTrusty responds. “I think because it finished in such a grandiose way, it felt like the perfect ending. I know some people will probably think ‘oh well done, you’ve played one arena show’. We don’t think we’re Kings Of Leon all of a sudden. I’ve been quoted as saying it felt like an ending, and it did, it felt like we’d closed the book. It felt like closure.”
McTrusty’s words don’t hold back. He’s open about how close this band was to the edge a year ago. Yet they returned from the brink, spurred by cementing full control three albums deep. It presented a new challenge.
“The main thing that happened was Ross, our bass player, and I, we actually approached this as producers as well as songwriters. We’ve spent plenty of time in studios getting familiar with gear and delving into that side of things a lot more. Being music geeks and music lovers we wanted to learn as much as possible about every facet of it. On our time off after ‘Great Divide’ we set up a home studio, entry level shit, and it allowed us to experiment and find all these new sound techniques and textures. That naive experimenting has turned into this record.”
But this isn’t the only force behind ‘GLA’. While the fundamental producing was led by both McTrusty and Mcnae, the Glaswegian sensations once again enlisted the help of Jackknife Lee, the producer of ‘Great Divide’. “What we wanted with the people we worked with was just ultimate trust, and they totally got what we were talking about when we were outlining what it is that we wanted to do. In the past, we never got to explore each other’s musical minds, and when you bring him in it feels almost as if we’re a new band, or at least we’ve got back to this naive ‘no idea what we’re doing’ sort of experience. It freshened everything up and made it more visceral with more room to expand.”
The notion of expansion is a fundamentally huge part of ‘GLA’s conception, an album that nods to the band’s early material. And while many fans of any band will always beckon for the sound they originally fell in love with, there isn’t a hint of regression in the songwriting capability of this band.
“For me, I think we proved ourself on our last record as ‘songwriters’, so nobody was scared we weren’t going to deliver. There’s so much bullshit that gets in the way but this time we were just sending demos straight to our producer.” Becoming more self-critical and opening up their musical minds is the exact recipe that spawned interesting songs like ‘Mothertongue’, the final song on the album and a completely stripped back and seemingly untouched tribute to the city that raised this band.
“It actually came out of a different place for me,” McTrusty confesses. “We only realised halfway through making the album that we were representing the attitude of being from Glasgow, a modern version of it anyway. We’ve found our place as adults living here, we’ve found ownership of where we’re from.”
“Glasgow has this other side to it that’s really heartfelt and drenched in entity almost. It’s a softhearted place as much as everyone thinks it’s hard-edged and scary. To get that in a different perspective we decided to go for a different producer with ‘Mothertongue’.”
‘GLA’ is just as adrenaline-fuelled as ‘Free’ but with the catchy edge of ‘Great Divide’ and refreshing musicality of ‘Vivarium’. It represents a new chapter in Twin Atlantic’s timeline and follows the stereotypical rule of threes, representing a departure from a band they once were. However, they are in no way prepared to start again or settle for the level they’re at, Twin Atlantic couldn’t be more excited for fans and the skeptics to hear what they’ve been up to.
“We were starving for that, that feeling you get of having a slightly bigger audience than when you return is one of the best parts of this band. It can get quite addictive, that feeling of taking a step up. We generally feel like we’ve earned every person who comes to show, and it’s only because we’ve got better. That’s instilled us with this work ethic that we’ve got to make a change to improve or challenge yourself. If you don’t do that then how can you expect people who listen to you to feel challenged?”
Becoming self-aware and able to ask yourself whether your music is coming from a selfish place is the mark of what makes an act sustainable not only for album sales or concert tickets, but for a band to continue enjoying what they’re doing and actually indulging in the music they create, this is something McTrusty has seriously considered ahead of ‘GLA’. “Rather than making music to make your fans happy, which is something we’ve always done, every song we’ve made on this record has been so selfish. We’re not trying to please the radio.”
Aware of the often fleeting nature of stardom, McTrusty takes a moment to reflect on the nostalgic appeal of bands and how this can run out of steam as quickly as it takes off. “I have a deep desire for something fucking good, but not just good, I want forward thinking and realness – actual tangible art. The last time I had that feeling was something like blink-182, as embarrassing as it is. We all started wearing fucking dickies and Atticus t-shirts. They weren’t faking that. That’s where they were from and that’s what their culture and lifestyle was. I feel like rock music since around that point has been something of a fantasy. There’s been a lot of nostalgia and throwbacks. I connect more to music when it comes from an organic place.”
The band have matured since their first release and have learned that with making music for yourself comes a cathartic relief. “We literally have nothing to prove. We maybe have something to prove to naysayers, but I don’t particularly want to. If you don’t get it, that’s fine. We used to try and impress and make people think we were the best band in the world. You just think ‘how can you not like this?’. But then we realised it’s all for pride.”
‘GLA’ will be available from the 9th September 2016. Pre-order it here.
WORDS BY: Max Gayler
PHOTO BY: Steve Gullick