The newest single from Saint John, New Brunswick’s Nurture Nurture was born of three things: lyricist and frontman Jeff Cook’s journey of sobriety and readjusting to that in a social context, a curious Newfoundland tradition and, presumably, math. The math-rock duo expertly pairs Cook’s guitar noodling to Scott Dincorn’s precision percussion on “Lonely Habits” as they lament the idea of another drink.
While living in St. John’s, NL, Jeff Cook picked up a local tradition of pushing himself to write, record and release 10 songs during the month of February– a tradition that he’s maintained since 2010.
“This song is the first song I wrote as part of this year’s RPM challenge,” says Cook. “The first song of every RPM is an ejaculation of all the influences I’d built up for the year so this one came out sounding a lot like Hikes and Invalids.”
It’s also a look into Cook’s mental processes as he navigates through the social world sans adult beverage. Tricky as that might be under regular circumstances, in the music industry it’s damn near impossible. Cook was concerned that giving up drinking would alienate him, both socially and professionally.
“The lyrics in this song helped me figure out that my alcoholism was separate from my activities with my friends and the two could be separated. The line ‘I know we will never stick together playing these games’ took forever to settle into a line rhythmically and emotionally,” says Cook.
“At first, I was blaming them for not being more flexible with my new found sobriety. I wanted them to change all the things we used to do together. Having sung the line over and over in studio and on stream it’s helped me realize that this is a two-way street and I’ve gotta stop playing these metaphorical games and get on repairing that relationship.”
Of course, pioneering advancements in the math-rock sciences is all about the attention to detail, and that’s where Jeff Cook thrives.
“This is also the first time I premeditated vocal melodies. I did so because I was deliberately writing for two instruments and a vocal for the first time. This was a big growth moment for me musically and it’s serving me stylistically now,” says Cook.
Guitar noodling and obscure time signatures, while important, are just skimming the surface of what Nurture Nurture are engaging in. They’ve been meticulous in their approach when it comes to metrics and marketing and turning out top-notch live-streams, but the real work has come from building a genuine community.
New Brunswick isn’t exactly known as the Mecca of math-rock. You can slide it in amongst the art pop and pop-punk bands, but you’ll rarely ever find a purely math-rock audience. So, Nurture Nurture have been reaching out on their own to rally support, often in the geekiest of ways.
The band have created their own Discord, which they used to pre-release single four weeks ago, along with chiptune versions of the song and even guitar tabs for it. More importantly, they’ve utilized their server as a support group for depression and anxiety.
“People in the support group are collectively participating in a type of cognitive behavioural therapy called ‘thought records’ together.,” explains Cook. “This journaling is proven to be a self-guided way to improve the symptoms of anxiety and depression.”
After all, it takes more than a single to develop a culture and more than a band to be a movement, but if they can be the driving force behind either, that can do a world of good.
The band have also announced plans to release videos for the acoustic and instrumental versions of “Lonely Habits” in the near future.