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Nov 19, 2012 By Dan Lucas Issue #43 - Animal Collective

The worth of the remix album has been questioned by critics countless times before, but when a band’s sound is completely reinvented, as is the case with The Twilight Sad’s No One Can Ever Know - The Remixes, the reasoning behind the album is pretty much self-evident. The original album released earlier this year was a post-rock trek through highlands fogged in bleak nostalgia, but if anything the musical Victor Frankensteins at work on the songs here—including Tom Furse of The Horrors, Com Truise, and, most excitingly, Liars—chop the songs up and create something even more uncomfortable.

The issue here is that the majority of remixes are unspectacular. The original record was decent but not especially memorable, and the remixes rarely rise above the level of a discarded Caribou B-side. “Alphabet,” for example, was more exciting the first time around with its synths recalling Radiohead’s “Idioteque” than it is after DJ Twitch’s post-dubstep treatment. The obvious album to put this alongside would be Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx’s We’re New Here, but the original material doesn’t compare with the hip-hop poet’s genius and only Liars seem capable of matching The xx man’s production: their take on “Nil” sounding more like the mutilated cousin of Portishead’s “The Rip.”

(www.thetwilightsad.com)

Author rating: 6/10