We’ve worked extremely hard, on this record – we’ve dug pretty deep, TBH. The result is a record which is easily the best thing we’ve done since “Perverse” And yes, we know, it’s practically a legal requirement for every band to say – “hey, it’s our best work!”, but in this case, it’s absolutely true.
When we did the world tour, lots of emotions rose to the surface. It felt like such an honour, and a privilege, to be able to still get out there, play shows and meet our fans, after all this time. We met so many familiar faces, returning to places we’d played sometimes decades previously. And it was incredible to see two things: how everything had changed, and yet, how everything had stayed the same. So, we’d reconnect with people and see how their lives had changed, how they’d grown. But we’d also see how these records we’d made had somehow remained a constant in their lives. The whole thing was really humbling. And that sense of wonder (and a little surprise, too) started to inform how the songs were written, and the story that they told.
“Twilight” is us looking back at where we’ve been, and where we stand, right now. It’s us looking at ourselves, at what we do. And it’s us wondering about our place in the world. It’s us asking the question: what if this was the last time? What if we couldn’t carry on doing this forever? It’s that same sense of self-doubt, which permeated “doubt”, and “Perverse”. “Twilight” reflects the idea that we started to think – what if it were a Twilight, for so many things? For our lives and careers? For countries that had once believed in their own exceptionalism? For a world which we’d taken for granted? For a climate out of control?
But, before we run away with all the doom, Twilight has different phases, too. So, it’s not just the sun going down. “Civil Twilight” is the phase just before dawn, when it’s the brightest form of Twilight. So, the album also began to reflect that. In the words of the first song written for the record: “might as well just carry on, still smiling”. There’s always hope, and the day is always darkest just before the dawn.
And that brings us on to the songs – two of them, you will (hopefully) have heard (“Still Smiling” and “Animal Instinct”), but by the time it came to include them on the album, they had to be completely rebuilt. So, those two tracks are radically different from their previous incarnations.
The rest of the album is the sound of us deciding to push things forward. We’d met all of those fans, all over the world, and seen how they’d changed and grown, as their lives had progressed. And it made us realise – if we didn’t grow and change, in a similar way, we’d be letting those people down. We wanted to show we weren’t just a remnant of the past, a band forever frozen in aspic. We wanted to see if we could still be ourselves, but be something more, too. A version of ourselves which allowed us to do whatever we wanted and not feel constrained by our legacy (whatever that was).
So, there are heavy songs, pop songs, moments of dystopian industrial techno, flamenco guitar lines, and even a song which is virtually a country ballad. The feeling that we were able to do whatever we wanted became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: it began to inform the very songs themselves. “Twilight” – despite the soul-searching of its lyrical stance – became a voyage predicated on doing things just for the sheer hell of it, and for the sense of pleasure and achievement you get, when you listen to yourself, first and foremost.