Twin Atlantic - Separation From The Animals - LP COLOURED

“One day, I’ll be a ghost, a spirit, that moves with you along the winds,” pines Twin Atlantic’s Sam McTrusty on the beautiful and cinematic ballad ‘Your, The End’, the fitting opener to the Scottish alt-rockers’ eighth album ‘Separation From The Animals’. “It’s about the responsibility I feel around being a parent,” he says, revealing that he cried while recording his vocal over bandmate Ross McNae’s tender Beatles-y piano part. If the album says anything, it’s ‘All You Need Is Love’, told with maturity and reckoning with the past to make sense of the present.

‘Separation From The Animals’ is an album born of two tales of triumph and perseverance – one of McTrusty grappling with his own ghosts, and the other of their finest album to date coming after a time when band morale was at an all time low. When their friends’ bands and peers were all calling it quits, words of wisdom from those close to the band were urging them to take time off. The album started out as a McTrusty solo effort, isolated in his new home.

The day the band finished work on their last album, 2024’s ‘Meltdown’, was also the day McTrusty packed up his entire life and studio to start a new life in Toronto with wife and two kids, unaware of the rich seam of songwriting that it would inspire. During this period of relocation and uncertainty, a question mark hung over whether Twin Atlantic would ever tour again.

Due to his location and the time difference, McTrusty found himself writing the core of their next album alone, just as was the case for Twin Atlantic in their early days. “Being here forced that throwback to the original format,” he reveals. “I must have needed it, because it’s quite an emotional record. I must have had a lot on my mind.”

Not growing up surrounded by music, it was his introduction to emo in his late teens and the forming of the band that finally gave him the vehicle to make sense of his own childhood. “I was working through feelings from quite a rocky and turbulent upbringing,” he admits. “It gave me tunnel vision. Maybe the move to Canada was quite a challenge so that’s why I went back to that safe space of me, my own thoughts and one instrument.” He continues: “I’ve been really lucky in being gifted the opportunity to talk about my feelings through music.”

In Canada, with just his studio and his past to reconcile with as he navigated his new life, McTrusty found himself in that ‘tunnel’ once again. “I’m from a family that’s fairly divided, so I’ve always been passed about from when I was six-months-old. It’s all I’ve ever known,” he says of his life’s trauma that seems to inform all of his songs in one way or another. “As you grow up, you start to view life through a different lens – especially the whole struggle of going from boy to man. My experience of that is particularly painful, emotional and confusing. But because it seemed normal at the time, it didn’t really hit me until I found my tribe, my people, my band. That lifestyle of being on tour with your friends, they become your family.

McTrusty adds: “My entire adult life is meant to have been looking ahead but my personal life is always looking back. That baggage is basically what the whole band is about. That was the origin for a lot of my songwriting, so it was like self-therapy. I just burrowed into creativity. Every single song is either a shrouded metaphor or a joke to try to hide something. For me, it’s a surface level pain.”

Now with the emotional maturity to face that pain and take ownership of his identity, McTrusty has shaped those feelings of wrestling with family, friendships and fatherhood into the timeless songwriting of ‘Separation From The Animals’.

Rather than throwing in the towel or taking a break, the band reorganized their team, slammed their foot on the accelerator, signed a partnership with a new label, and made a new record in the way that always made most sense.

Recorded by the band and produced by McTrusty across London’s iconic Abbey Road (a “dream come true” for The Beatles obsessives), as well as locations in Glasgow at McNae’s studio, and then largely in Sam’s Toronto home, the album was also mixed by brilliant Romesh Dodangoda (Bring Me the Horizon, Nova Twins, Motorhead).

McNae and guitarist Barry McKenna went to Toronto in the deepest winter to do a bulk of the recording. “It was the first time we’d been to Sam’s since he moved to Canada, so it was emotional to see his “new” life. That was more on Barry and my mind than the record when we were on the way over there if I’m honest. We’ve been to Toronto so much over the years, but never to your best friend’s Toronto, you know.” explains McNae. “Also, we’ve made so many records that we really just switch on when we get there, there’s not too much premeditation, we’re quite spontaneous. Being in this band is more about the friendships and the whole journey than the nuts and bolts of the music, that’s almost a given that we will make something when it’s time to.”

Leaning on classic ‘60s and ‘70s influences to allow organic flow of feeling free of shallow modern trends while still maintaining Twin Atlantic's quintessential heartfelt anthemic arenashaking DNA, ‘Separation From The Animals’ allows McTrusty the freedom to speak directly from the heart. “The arc of the record is just about perseverance,” he shares. “The whole thing is a love story, and often the darker side of that. It’s never all rainbows and sunshine.” “Being a bit more transparent and honest with things is what I’m yearning for because of all the plastic social media paintings of life, AI in music and being bombarded with commercialism.”

From the choice of amps and guitars down to the cover art and Steve Guillick-snapped band portraits, “Every single decision was me trying to make the record feel like it was made in the 1970s,” says McTrusty.

Take the yearning and simmering ‘In Your Eyes’, inspired by playing with Muse in 2024 to “write a big anthem that’s emotional” with a dose of The Cure’s melancholy after McNae caught them on their last tour. "It's about being at the other end of a relationship where you feel like no matter what you do, nothing is ever good enough,” says McTrusty. “You take a step back and realise that in trying to appease that one person, you’ve blinded yourself to the fact that everything is great. Look outside of that window and life is much better.”

That taste of the bright side comes again on the huge open-armed rocker of ‘Supersweetness’. “Every song is a love song really, but this one is about the bittersweet feeling of adoring my children until the point where it makes me feel ill,” says McTrusty, inspired but that overwhelming feeling of “loving something so much that it actually hurts“ – drawing on the sounds of The Who and inviting his young daughters onto the backing vocals to drive the point home.

While there’s the widescreen beauty in ‘The Risk Of Love Is Always Loss’ and the string-led lighters up moments like ‘Save Your Breath’, ‘Unless It Hurts’ and the perfect closer ‘Feel It All’ laying all the “pain, grieving and suffering” to rest, there’s plenty of lift too. ‘Don’t Quit It’ is a funky Daft Punk-tinged number inspired by the tongue-in-cheek shameless pop abandon likely colored by their time on the road with The 1975 and McFly, while the hard-hitting ‘Confidant’ “takes our Nirvana influence to the extreme”, McTrusty admits. “I would often lean away from that over the years, but now it’s just what I want it to sound like. Nothing beats that. It’s like getting in a car, putting your foot down and not stopping. It’s such a thrill, and nothing beats playing stuff like that live.

‘Confidant’ and ‘Don’t Quit It’ hit that whole lot harder courtesy of drummer Craig Kneale returning for those two tracks, “Given any drummer in the world, I would always go for Craig first,” says McTrusty. “We have similar tastes, and he and I have got a chemistry that’s very well-gelled”

The legendary and highly sought-after session drummer Ash Soan [Snow Patrol, Adele, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa] was brought in to record the other tracks when Craig wasn’t available – much to Twin Atlantic’s delight and surprise – but Kneale’s involvement on the record speaks how the band has survived the choppy seas of life and a music industry that grows ever more ruthless. They’re open and at ease with one another, with founding guitarist Barry McKenna still playing live with the band, as showcased on their best summer of touring in years and the celebrated 10 year anniversary tour of the beloved breakthrough album ‘Great Divide’. Releasing eight albums in 13 years while remaining an active, forward-looking creative force and not collapsing into a legacy act is no mean feat. Twin Atlantic have often seen members take a step back or return as they healthily cope with the storm and stress. “We started as a band of four guys in a van with £50 between us,” he says. “We were one of the last ever old-school bands given the chance to learn from mistakes, not from the internet. Slowly over the years, that dream shifted into something else. We’ve had to grow. We have a really healthy dynamic where anyone can come, go, say what they feel and things will always be on your terms.”

Even the band’s promo shots taken in the Highlands see them at peace with their Scottishness. “That’s having ownership over something that used to frustrate me,” the frontman admits. “I sing in my talking accent, because it seems mad that you’d ever do anything else. It’s always been the butt of a joke. We’ve always been ‘a Scottish band’ rather than just ‘a band’. That’s cool and I’m now so proud of that.”

Now, on their most accomplished and widescreen record to date, Twin Atlantic are offering monolithic choruses while also at their most raw and exposed, with nothing to hide from anymore. Pointing to the full spectrum of love, life and loss on show on ‘Separation From Animals’, McTrusty adds: “This is what we’ve always been but with the veil lifted. I hope people hear the record and it inspires them to do that and be more honest with themselves.”

Side A :
Your, The End / In Your Eyes / I'm Not Coming Home / Don't Quit It / Strong / The Risk Of Love Is Always Loss

Side B :
Unless It Hurts / Confidant / Save Your Breath / Supersweetness / Lost / Feel It All