Dave Simpson 

Twin Atlantic: Great Divide review – wistful stadium rock with heart

The Scottish rockers and festival favourites barrel through lyrical cliches for an earnest, listenable third album, writes Dave Simpson
  
  

Ross McNae of Twin Atlantic
Biffy Clyro meets Bon Jovi … Ross McNae of Twin Atlantic. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns

"You can tell that the youth of today have lost their voice/ No questions, we just accept what we're taught," sings Sam McTrusty on The Ones That I Love, opening Twin Atlantic's third album. Delivered over a desolate piano, it sounds like the gateway to a Sleaford Mods-type political Molotov cocktail. However, it's unrepresentative of the chest-beating, stadium rock that follows, which has already propelled the band to festival ubiquity and on to Radio 1 playlists. Something of a cross between Biffy Clyro and Bon Jovi, the Twins are not concerned by a barrow-load of cliches as they aim for the man in the back row. McTrusty urges we listen to his heartbeat and, inevitably, "hold on". However, the earnest singer saves Great Divide from being mere bluster. Rest in Pieces survives a terrible pun to chime plangently, McTrusty's lyrics about nostalgia for family conversations and the power of words and dreams are delivered like he really means them, and the Snow Patrol-like Brothers and Sisters sounds like a hit-in-waiting.

 

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