The Twilight Sad have announced their new album It’s The Long Goodbye will drop on March 27th via Rock Actions Records (Mogwai). Along with news, the band have shared single “Designed To Lose.” The track is the follow-up to their previoussingle “Waiting For The Phone Call,” which featured The Cure’s Robert Smith on guitar.

The Twilight Sad will be on tour in the UK and Europe in April and May including a performance at the Roundhouse in London. The band also recently announced news of a second Glasgow Barrowland show in early May. This will be followed by a handful of dates performing as special guests to The Cure in June and July.

“It had to contain every element of emotion I was feeling,” says singer/lyricist James Graham of The Twilight Sad’s new album. The band return with a story to share: a cogent story of loss and personal crisis, rooted in specific experience yet mounted with a palpable emotional power that feels universal. Set to urgent and guitar-rich arrangements from bandmate Andy MacFarlane, IT’S THE LONG GOODBYE reflects on James’s mother’s illness, her subsequent death and his own mental health struggles, exploring profound human vulnerability with tenderness and tempestuous force.

As James says, “In the past I’ve used a lot of metaphors within my lyrics. With this, there’s not as much. The record is heavily influenced by my mental health, grief and loss, and the need to be strong in positions where you’re not feeling it. It’s a very human story, I think – this is just my version of it. I feel that everybody goes through something like this. Everybody loses somebody. Everybody questions life.”

Back in 2016, James and Andy returned from the “pinch yourself” high of a tour with The Cure to find that James’s mother had been diagnosed with early onset frontotemporal dementia. Roughly 80 per cent of the record was written as James wrestled with the contrast between the joys in his life – marriage, parenthood – and the cruelty of his mother’s decline. In November 2023, another tour with The Cure was brought to a necessary halt as his mental health deteriorated. “And then my mum passed away in the January afterwards,” says James.

The record was developed over seven years, with the London-based MacFarlane stockpiling musical ideas during lockdown while exchanging words and sounds with Graham. The Cure’s Robert Smith, by now a longtime close friend of the band, provided invaluable input on the demos and guested on the record, supplying extra guitars on “WAITING FOR THE PHONE CALL,” guitars/“Tron keys” on “DEAD FLOWERS” and six-string bass on “BACK TO FOURTEEN.” “Then we had to piece together a band,” says Andy, with THE TWILIGHT SAD now centred on him and James after former bandmates were drawn away by life commitments. Sometime Arab Strap player David Jeans and Mogwai live team-member Alex Mackay play drums and bass , while the album was produced by MacFarlane at Willesden’s Battery Studios – a location rich in cherished Cure history, notably – with additional production from Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine) and mixing by Chris Coady (Slowdive).

The Twilight Sad
It’s The Long Goodbye
tracklist

1. GET AWAY FROM IT ALL
2. DESIGNED TO LOSE
3. ATTEMPT A CRASH LANDING – THEME
4. WAITING FOR THE PHONE CALL
5. THE CEILING UNDERGROUND
6. DEAD FLOWERS
7. INHOSPITABLE/HOSPITAL
8. CHEST WOUND TO THE CHEST
9. BACK TO FOURTEEN
10. TV PEOPLE STILL THROWING TVS AT PEOPLE

Pre-order It’s The Long Goodbye HERE