James Graham is not exactly holding up his role as lead singer of the Twilight Sad. The man known for songs like “And She Would Darken the Memory,” “I Became a Prostitute” and “Don’t Look at Me” sounds damned psyched on the phone as he crosses over the border from Canada into the U.S. This is their most buzzed-about tour yet, thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response to the new album No One Can Ever Know. The band took a risk with the album, which represents a big departure in their sound, and it seems to be paying off in a whole new wave of fans.
“It’s all been great,” says Graham. “Apart from the visa fiasco.”
Ah, finally, some gloom. Stories trickled across the Atlantic last month about the Twilight Sad’s visa problems, but no one seemed to have the whole story. Even the San Jose show on Wednesday (March 7) at the Blank Club seemed like it might be in jeopardy. But in the end, they only had to cancel the first two shows of the tour, and now Graham can explain the bureaucratic snafu they were up against—and what they had to go through to fix it.
“We were told two days before we meant to come over to America that the visas hadn’t been filed or something,” he says. “We basically went into a panic and tried to figure out the quickest way to get visas, and the quickest way was to go to Paris. It was a pretty expensive trip; we went to Paris and then played New York the same night. Pretty long day, but it was good, though. The New York show was amazing.”
Good? Great? Amazing? Where’s the guy who sang “Throw your eyes to the floor/You’re looking at the guilty one” and “The kids are on fire in the bedroom”? Actually, Graham turns out to have quite a sense of humor about himself, even as he explains that he likes touring now much more than he used to.
“I’m just enjoying it. As much as you can enjoy singing really fucking depressing songs all the time,” he says dryly.
