Warning: written in a state of week 5 agitation and not in any way as a fan.

I'm not going to lie, the Twilight Sad are not really my cup of tea. Or coffee. Not because they are too loud and experimental but because they are too ordinary and safe. To me the Twilight Sad are simply a very mediocre, loud, energetic rock band, and these days that's a routine thing to be, not an original thing. The band sounds like more of the same old formula. Yes, the music is anthemic, it's heavy, it's punishing and loud and it's definitely physical and can knock the breath out of you, but in many ways it’s music that follows a formula and is very conservative. It's a bit of Biffy Clyro, a slab of Mogwai, a touch of Weezer, maybe even a hint of Smashing Pumpkins. They are, perhaps, a stranger, foggier, shadowy Foo Fighters. They talk about Leonard Cohen and Daniel Johnston as influences, but that kind of otherness barely makes it into their live music.

Quite frankly, I've had enough of the male-dominated, bearded, clad-in-all-black-t-shirts-wielding-a-heavy-bass-guitar bands. They're like boy bands with a menacing attitude and menacing look, but nothing that's as threatening as their aggression would imply. Aren't they themselves bored with making such a sound and looking as they look? Don't they want to be different, unlike so many other things? Don't they want to think of something new, or am I missing the point when I expect rock music to be fresh and surprising, and not like so many other things that got their first and did it all so much better. I want rock music to be dangerous, adventurous, to break up the system, to suggest new patterns, and now it feels as if rock music is just becoming part of the system.

Glaswegian Singer James Graham has a towering and dramatic presence on stage, but he is also quite shy. He slinks away from the audience as he delivers his coiled, intense, demonic cries. Don't get me wrong: the band are very good at what they do. I just wonder if it is enough to make good music these days, considering that everyone can have access to instruments, garage band, myspace, and become this sort of psyched-up rock group with definite influences and a need to make loud noise. Is it enough to simply make good music, or does music need to have another kind of context?

The Twilight Sad make a lot of noisy noise about pain and heartache, about mountains and forests and despair, but nothing that seems intent on remaking the world. The noise they make at the Haymakers is as you would expect: a big, intimidating wall. But it is noise that I have heard before. It's the making of heavy, intense sound as a sort of mundane job. I feel as if we are now ready for a new kind of noise, something that breaks away from the past, and opens up genuinely dangerous new possibilities. William Dean Howells said that, "he who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence". I'm not suggesting that silence is what we need, but perhaps we need some sort of silence before the next sort of noise.