The Twilight Sad - South Street, Reading

The Twilight Sad somehow don’t live up to their name.

It’s difficult to pin down quite what a band with that name should sound like, but it wasn’t the squall of noise this touted Scottish five-piece produced at Reading’s South Street on Wednesday last week.

Far be it from me to dictate how a band should sound, but the initial promise of something in the line of post-rock giants  nd compatriots Mogwai proved unfounded, while a comparison to notorious Nottingham miserabilists Tindersticks was even wider off the mark.

Maybe there is more nuance in their recordings, but live the group are the sort to use noise as a weapon to near-bludgeon the audience.

Some will happily offer themselves forward for this kind of sensory bashing experience, but it’s of limited appeal: guitars swell and crash like a morbid sea as lyrics are pulled down to inaudible depths.

In quieter moments they touched on an Atmosphere-like Joy Division intensity – but they were fleeting.