53 Degrees presents...

Twin Atlantic

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Tuesday 08 February 2011

£6.64 + Booking Fee

Support: Straight Lines / Population Four

16+

NUS/Public

Doors: 7.30-11pm

Club

In March 2009, Twin Atlantic headed over the ocean to the crazed streets of Austin, Texas to play four blistering shows at South by Southwest. Their American adventure took them to LA shortly afterwards to record ‘Vivarium' with producer John Travis, who has worked with Kid Rock, Sugar Ray, Static X and Social Distortion. With this unfamiliar environment looming on the horizon, Sam started working on the lyrics, for the first time looking outwards at the world around him.

"All the songs on the EP were all really personal, probably too personal. Just moaning about my problems and my family," Sam remembers. "But the lyrics on the new record are a lot more universal. The opening song ‘Lightspeed' fully encompasses the whole idea of the record, a kind of togetherness, and us being determined not to give up. There's a song called ‘You're Turning Into John Wayne', which is about Americanization. It relates to signing with an American label and we were on the phone to a lot of American producers all the time talking about going over there to record, and it was just in the front of my mind, the way American culture is everywhere. So much so that loads of bands put on fake American accents in hopes to be more commercially viable in the US, while it was important to us to stay true to our roots and just be ourselves. It's not meant as an anti-American song, we've had a blast in the US. It's more just an observation from a guy from Glasgow. And ‘Caribbean War Syndrome' came about because I was reading about being at war in Italy, and I was also playing a lot of the video game, ‘Medal of Honor,' so I wrote a song about people going to war in the Caribbean, that idea of trouble in paradise."

Twin Atlantic are poised for greatness. The group of fans who once held them as their little secret is growing like a virus, the word of mouth buzz about their intense live shows building a rock solid base that the band can rely on. And for Sam McTrusty, it's a state of affairs he's been sure of for as long as they have been playing together.

"We're some of those people who just totally believe in ourselves," Sam smiles. "If people don't like our ideas we always think it's not that they don't like them, they just don't understand them. We're convinced by that wholeheartedly and determined to just keep on going and going, and that's why we've lost friends and girlfriends, fallen out with friends and family and got kicked out of flats to be in this band. So when we see other people believing in a wee story that we've written, that keeps pushing us."

But this, more than ever, is no time for complacency. After the summer festivals have been shaken to their foundations, it's time for the band to start thinking really big.

"My ambition is so great for this band that I'm never going to be really happy until we're one of the big guys," says Sam. "I don't really care what people think of that. I would love for our band to be one of the biggest bands in the world because I believe in myself and the other guys in the band so much. I believe we can do that."