Twin Atlantic

Transparency is Twin Atlantic as you’ve never known them. Ten candid, funny, funky songs find frontman Sam McTrusty spilling his guts on everything from marriage, male friendship and the absurdity of social media to parenthood, medication and his mum.

Written in strained circumstances and recorded remotely with Sam’s mate and mentor Jacknife Lee (U2, The Killers, Taylor Swift). Transparency arrived more by accident than design, an experiment that snowballed when the world went in to lockdown last spring. Only when eight songs were completed did the pair accept that an album was underway.

“I barely remember making the music,” says Sam. “That sounds ridiculous, but it was a ridiculous time. I was a new dad, isolating at home in a heatwave because my wife, a nurse, was working on Covid wards. A year of touring turned to dust. I existed for months on two hours sleep a day, having already made myself ill with stress trying to write a new album just as our last one came out. Somehow, from the midst of that chaos came these songs.”

Sent home to Glasgow mid-UK tour last March, Twin Atlantic were already close to completing the planned follow-up to POWER, their fifth album and first for a major label, which reached No.11 on its release last January. Sessions with L.A.-based Jacknife had been scheduled for the summer, when Twin Atlantic should have been touring the States.

“My knee-jerk reaction was to block out the fact that the world might be ending by working on new music,” says Sam. “I messaged Jacknife, expecting him to be too busy. He said all of his work had been cancelled and how about jumping on FaceTime that night.”

Ticket price – £30 advance (£34 on door)