Halifax’s Nap Eyes have, once again, quietly raised a middle finger to what the world around them sounds like and dug their heels deeper into a sound that would happily emanate off the walls of a house party they weren’t invited to.
With frontman Nigel Chapman‘s wavering, resonant vocals out front, the rest of the band plucks through an arrangement of songs that build upon one another so subtlety, you didn’t even realize they were doing it. When the closing track, “Boats Appear” marches to its eventual end, your living room is filled with an empty echo of anticipation. Sorry, that’s all folks.
But don’t worry, now you can go back on your second spin and start to piece the crescendo together.
The opening track “Every Time The Feeling” introduces you to everything the album will eventually give you, butt it restrains itself and doesn’t quite lift you with a hook or catch you with a chorus. Instead, it forces you to hum along and almost asks you to recite a few lines back to it.
Each song acts as a crest to a wave with something bigger in store behind it, but makes you wait for each set, like a surfer sitting on their board, atop flat water in the middle of a storm they were told was brewing.
Drummer Seamus Dalton marches us through the vacant halls of the album with two sticks planted firmly on the snare. As the drums roll on, John Salter’s bass falls completely in step. Even though this quartet doesn’t give you much to pick apart, they hang the flesh of their songs upon sturdy bones. Leaking out guitar licks at the pace of syrup dripping from a spile – Nap Eyes may be slow, but they are tight.
This album is best when its bright. Although they are more comfortable at a crawl than a sprint, Nap Eyes shows us they can move when they want to. The track “Dull Me Line” ushers out an almost doo-wop pace, that bounces you through a world Nigel seems to be yearning for, one where love is found and friends stick around and stick up for each other. “Hearing The Bass“, two tracks down, is upbeat and practically frantic compared to everything else in the bands entire catalogue.
I’m Bad Now finds it strongest offering with “White Deciple“. This song is Nigel at his story telling best, guitarist Brad Lougheed at his most relaxed and the band at their over all, easiest to listen to.
On track five Nigel sings the thesis statement to the whole album:
“Follow me down / I’ll show you the way / to where the broad cove carries / into the bay. If you’ve got the time / got something to say / won’t you walk with me down to the bay?”
This is it, this is what Nap Eyes are trying to show us with their third, full length offering. The Lou Reed and Bob Dylan comparisons have been made, the sound has been solidified, sometimes fluctuating but never straying from confident, lonely and subdued, but this is where they want to take us – to a quiet contemplative shore where waves can crash, but mostly don’t.
Nigel and Co. have found peace in their ocean of sound. Pop music these days is so much white noise and shrill cackles from studio produced birds. A band might find it hard not to follow the trend of track heavy, dense songs about love or nothing at all. Not Nap Eyes. These four are afloat on a barge of their own design, happy to meander on a watery plain of salty, simplicity; and when the sun decides to break through the gray, this album is damn warm… and not bad at all.