The Twilight Sad: James Graham talks about collaboration with Arab Strap's Aidan Moffat

The Twilight Sad frontman James Graham’s latest project, Gentle Sinners - a collaboration with Arab Strap singer Aidan Moffat - grew out of a period of intense anxiety.

Their album, These Actions Cannot Be Undone, released last month, is an unpredictable mish-mash of jazz, pop and electronica, very different musically to The Twilight Sad, but lyrically still misery-inflected, with overtones of hope.

“It’s something that probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been going through the pandemic,” Graham says. “When I was at home, I realised [guitarist] Andy [MacFarlane] and I would always write music for the Twilight Sad, but I also wanted to try something new.

“My mental health had gone downhill. I had experienced anxiety for a long time, but I hadn’t addressed it. I thought that was the normal way to feel, but it began to manifest physically on me. I started to feel ill and I wanted to write about how I was feeling, about how I was trying to get through that and the acceptance that I needed help rather than that Scottish Central Belt thing of ‘just get on with it’. It felt like failure, but I did ask for help, and I wanted to document that.”

Twilight Sad play at the Barrowlands. Picture: Calum Mackintosh @resoundonline

Graham says it was a dream come true to work with Moffat, who first inspired him to start writing. “The fact Aidan wanted to do this with me was amazing. I think we just jumped into it, like ‘here we go, let’s try to have fun as well as talk about something serious’,” he tells me.

“The album is wild, not what people would have expected from us. The songs are dark, but a lot of the music is uplifting. I love it - I’m not scared to say that. It was really important for me to do, and it got me through the pandemic.”

Graham says lockdown also helped clarify what he wanted from the Twilight Sad. “Becoming a dad [he has two boys aged four and four months] had already changed me but the pandemic helped me get to the core of what was important.

“After 15 years of touring, I was able to sit back and think about who I am and what the band is and why it is important to me.

“What I want most is to be relatable, to bridge the gap between band and audience and to talk about love, loss - the things we all go through. I am so fed up of pompous people who get up on stage and think they’re God. I think we all need to share experiences and help each other through stuff.”

Gentle Sinners will be announcing live gigs soon. And in October, The Twilight Sad will embark on a tour supporting The Cure, with 44 shows across 22 countries in Europe and the UK.

Graham says he will be loath to leave his boys, but is also excited to be back on the road.

“I think it will be an amazing experience,” he says. “There will be pinch-yourself moments every single day.”