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Ah, Twin Atlantic’s Free.
An epic album watermarked and etched forever in the cornerstones of my music fanciful tastes when I was merely a boy.
After scooping this album in its CD form simply for the love of its delightfully intriguing album cover, I had no idea I would even play it once – never mind fall in love with its whole entirety.
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Created in the summer of 2011 – when phones were not eclipsed to the surface of our skin, and there was certainly less pressure in society for kids – Twin Atlantic‘s glossy supremacy of Free was the game changer for me and I instantly loved the band, the euphoria and the music.
With the Scottish angst chard, the vital chords struck home and it is, to this day, my favourite album of all time. Whether that be the nostalgic memories tainting my thoughts and values on the quality of the music, but it is a perfect album throughout.
Apart from knowing every minor fragment of the songs, all lyrical moments and drum parts, the album just has absolute monstrous bangers included.
Time For You Stand Up, Make a Beast of Myself, Eight Days just to name a few that can rip your arms right out of their sockets. The momentum of the album is waded brilliantly too with moments of beauty – Crash Land and Wonder Sleeps Here. Not to mention Serious Underground Dance Vibes which may very well have been my morning alarm for years, come to think of it.
The utter obsession of course worked, and made me unequivocally purchase the next album in 2015, Great Divide, which happened to be just as compelling, just as cut-throat and beautiful all in the same breath.
The invention and soon-to-be discovery of Spotify from myself, led me into a rabbit hole of everything Scottish rock, and of course, I had to listen to the predecessor of Free, which was Vivarium in 2009.
A buoyant and boyish album all about making music for fun, classics like Lightspeed and You’re Turning into John Wayne, certainly catapulted their fanatics and ultimately led them on to create Free a mere two years later.
Although the recent album works of GLA (2016) and POWER (2020) have certainly not had the same impact (possibly down to life getting in the way, and with these albums not being released in my adolescent years, too, for that matter) their catalogue is still highly commendable and certainly paves a way on how to achieve commercial success in Scottish rock.
For me, it really was the stepping stones (or one of them at least) that made me rethink my music taste, my musical journey, habits and hobbies in life and most importantly, made me tune in less to those fanciful chart radio stations and tune into to some actual stations. Thanks boys.
