Nightlands Announces New Album ‘Oak Island’ Out 21st Jan 2013 on Secretly Canadian, Streams ‘So Far So Long’ Track
New album from The War On Drugs’ Dave Hartley
Nightlands has announced the release of new album ‘Oak Island’ out on Secretly Canadian 21st Jan 2013 in the UK and Europe. Nightlands is also known as Dave Hartley, the bassist from The War On Drugs, witnessing him embrace his love of classic 70s rock and pop. It’s Seals & Croft produced by mid-70s beetle-voiced Brian Eno, Crosby, HAL and Nash.
Hear this magic concoction for yourself via new track ‘So Far So Long’.
The son of a genetic engineer, Dave Hartley has eschewed his father’s profession but decidedly inherited his analytical proclivities and love of “the lab.” As Nightlands, Hartley is a scientist trying to create and understand art through analytical process. Here, with sophomore album Oak Island, his follow up to 2010’s superb Forget the Mantra, new questions are explored: what happens when the human voice is layered exponentially? Is the sum more man, or more melancholy machine? In seeking these answers, Nightlands takes us on a spirit quest through lush forests down into The Uncanny Valley. Each distorted, silver-voiced melody is wrapped in the sounds of 70s AM gold — plucked acoustic guitars, trumpets, dulcimers and hand percussion. In using these pop touchstones, the songs become something close to memories, the faded feelings that tide in and out of you when conjuring the past. To this end, virtually every chord played on ‘Oak Island’ is a major-7th, the most nostalgic harmonic grouping.
Beneath the analytics and technical experimentation lie 10 pop songs about sadness and love; this silvery robot has learned what it means to be human and paid a great cost. The elegant, lunar bossa-nova of album standout “So Far So Long,” with its distant trumpeted satellite signals, offers a slow, confident lilting and wilting, as Hartley considers traversing space and time.
Hartley is a prolific sideman in many notable bands in and around Philadelphia and the extraordinary bassist of The War on Drugs (he played bass on Sharon Van Etten’s ‘Epic’, in Sondre Lerche’s touring band, and sings in The Silver Ages). Listeners expecting a simple side project, however, will be surprised by the boldness and scope of his vision. Nightlands is the Chuck Close painting to the The War on Drugs’ De Kooning.
‘Oak Island’ track listing
01. Time & Place
02. So Far So Long
03. You’re My Baby
04. Nico
05. So it Goes
06. Born to Love
07. I Fell In Love With a Feeling
08. Rolling Down The Hill
09. Other Peoples Pockets
10. Looking For Rain
Nightlands will play a handful of US shows in Philadelphia and Brooklyn this side of the year, including a one-off performance of an original score to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Full details are here, with more info to follow on UK and European shows.
http://nightlands.us
www.secretlycanadian.com