A Song For Friday: Nighttime

As you might have gleaned from previous remarks, I have a love/hate relationship with my email. On the one hand, it’s so clogged with stuff I’ll never catch up. Where “inbox zero” once seemed a potential reality, now I’d be happy with “inbox 50%”! But it also brings me a steady stream of gems, like this album called Looking Glass by Nighttime (Self-Released), which is out today. If you’re saying “Who?,” that’s the same experience I had when Eva Louise Goodman, who started the band as a solo project in 2014, sent me the press release on the first single, Snake Eyes, back in May.

After scrolling through the copy, which noted the involvement of Sam Evian, who produced Hannah Cohen’s stellar Earthstar Mountain, and dropped the name “Florist,” I knew I would have to give it a try. Further sealing the deal was the distinctive cover art by Leal Neale. Snake Eyes turned out to be a pure dream of a song, with finger-picked guitar, soaring trumpet, and vocals that flew even higher, adding up to an Americana-psych sound that gripped me from the start.

Where had this band been all my life? I asked as I shared the grainy, evocative video everywhere. It could be that they’re just more well-known in California, where Goodman is based, or it could be that their time is just coming now. I’m also happy to report that the album more than lives up to the promise of Snake Eyes, with a seemingly limitless array of sounds, from strings and flute to harp and saw, decorating and lending variety to Goodman’s enigmatic and wondrous songs. The cast of characters is indeed impressive, with Goodman’s guitar, violin, and viola, surrounded by Florist’s Rick Spataro on bass, Wilder Maker’s Gabriel Birnbaum on sax, noted New Zealand musician Roy Montgomery on guitar, Evian, who mixed the album, and others too numerous to mention.

Let’s focus on Mother of Invention, which comes smack-dab in the middle of Looking Glass. The song has an epic structure, opening with a fanfare of sparkling pedal steel, washy cymbals, and gleaming keyboards and guitars. “The Mother of Invention/is holding the child of light/In the kitchen in the night,” Goodman interjects into this paradisiacal sound-world, eliding any unnecessary syllables, her voice sounding lost in another world. This is an incantation. Eventually, the verse sets the song in flight on a swooning three-chord structure, drums pushing everything forward as the pedal steel swoops and glides. The song ebbs and flows like water or a breeze through trees, with one near-crescendo introducing a pounding Fender Rhodes in an echo of John Paul Jones’ work on live versions of Stairway to Heaven. After singing the last lines (“I can see the future and I can tell you’re smiling/I can see us flying/Down the line/On the open road of life”), Goodman lets the song play out for nearly one glorious minute, with strings, choral voices, and more incandescing until they actually flame out. Hear it to believe.

Come to think of it, the chord sequence is similar to the Led Zeppelin classic, and at one point Goodman sings “The Father of the World is/Coming down from the sky/The carpet on the stairs is starting to wear/But he takes them two at a time.” Perhaps the stairway to heaven is a two-way street, so to speak. At the very least, music is a constant series of reinventions, as proven marvelously by Nighttime throughout this magical album.

Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.

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Kelela - new avatar (Warp) In 2024, I confessed that I found more “energy and adventure” in RAVE:N, the remix album of Raven, Kelela’s fine’n’mellow 2023 album. Now, for her third proper album, the Washington, D.C.-based singer, songwriter, and producer seems to be saying, “remix THIS!” Working with co-producer Oscar Schaller (Pink Pantheress, Lily Allen, etc.) Kelela has built backgrounds that range from idea 1, the dark, moody opener with guitarist Scarlet House painting lightning across the sky, to the sweet, spare synth-driven if we meet again, which closes the album. Throughout the album, her voice is at its most divine, airy yet rhythmically acute. There are a few guests on the album, including Pink Pantheress, but the one who really owns his time is A.K. Paul, creator of monster grooves Landcruisin’ and Watchin’ U, who adds a dark undertow, pastel guitars, and some vocal grit to Outta Time, which he also produced. As their voices intertwine, you feel Kelela’s thrill at a vision becoming reality. It can happen for you, too, just by pressing “Play.”

Speaker Music - Synoptic Music (Planet Mu) Three years on from Techxodus, his “atmospheric, cinematic” second album as Speaker Music, DeForrest Brown, Jr. has capped off the project with this fascinating collection. The liner notes, which I read after listening, are wild, detailing the very different approach Brown took to making this album. But I hear it as an album of two halves. The first five tracks delineate the space, with drones, beats, synthetic colors, and occasional narration assembling into a geography of sound. It all feels quite rational, even in its left turns and distortions. Then, starting with the title track, all hell breaks loose, as if Brown built a village just to demolish it. The dynamics are all over the place, and the percussion feels alive and barely in control at times. The final track, Dhalgren (Nihilism Is Not Enough), pays tribute to Sci-Fi legend Samuel R. Delaney, and is so dramatic and action-packed that it could almost be an attempt to compress an epic tale into just under eight minutes. Whatever name Brown uses for his next project, I plan to have a front row seat.

Arthur King - UMN (Fantastic Planet) (AKP) Live recordings are second-hand in a different way from studio recordings, due to an audience being present while they’re made. This improvised album can almost be seen as third-hand, however, because the players were reacting in real time to their first viewing (UMN = Unknown Movie Night) of Fantastic Planet, an animated film by René Laloux from 1973. Unless you put the film on while listening, you’re taking all the sounds and sequences at face value, which is quite enough to transport you to a fantastic planet of your own imagining. However it was made, UMN (Fantastic Planet) is a sprawling affair that makes a typical Arthur King album (if there is such a thing) sound concise by comparison. Over an hour and 15 minutes, the group (guitarist Peter Walker joined this time by drummer Kern Haug, bassist JP Maramb, violinist Pauline Lay, digital woodwind player David Ralicke) moves through many modes, from pure atmosphere to jammy segments that touch the godhead of Jimi Hendrix’s 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be). My only caveat is that you only need to listen to Floria Sigismondi’s introduction once. As a “third-hand” listener, it did little to enhance the experience. Other than that, this is a journey well worth experiencing.

Twisted Teens - Florida Water Blues (Going Underground Records) While this still rocks like heck, it feels a little more buttoned-down than Caspian Hollywell’s “ragged” Blame The Clown from earlier this year. That could be because he’s wrangling a slightly bigger lineup than last time. In addition to Razor Ramone, who returns on pedal steel, there’s also Mel Billiard on guitars and Cameron Snyder on Casio, while drummer Howe Pearson plays on one song, and Darcey Blye adds vocals to a couple. Hollywell is still the main man, however, playing drums, guitar, bass, and synths. His vocals lead the way, however, and they are as arresting as ever. On Concealed Weepin’, one of the standouts, he injects a bit of talk-singing when he intones “Little fucker with a big attitude/Did not socially integrate to the school/Did not get in the deep end of the pool/Was not considered super duper cool.” Who needs cool? I speak from experience when I say, “Long live Twisted Teens!”

she’s green - Swallowtail (Photo Finish Records) Shimmering guitars that periodically erupt in noisy bursts, implacable rhythms, and sweet vocals that sail above it all put this Minneapolis quintet solidly in the modern shoegaze camp. But they (vocalist Zofia Smith, guitarists Liam Armstrong and Raines Lucas, bassist Teddy Nordvold, and drummer Kevin Seebeck) do it all exceedingly well, with patient builds and rich layers, all expertly captured by producer Sonny Diperri, who served his studio apprenticeship with Flood and Alan Moulder. If you know who they are, you know how good this debut album sounds.

Holy Wave - i’m DADA (Suicide Squeeze) This Austin quartet has been together since 2008 and recording since at least 2011. However, although I’ve been aware of them for a while, they had no passionate advocates in my circle, and I never got around to listening to them. But an email from the estimable folks at Terrorbird Media piqued my interest in their seventh album, and I’m glad I gave it a chance. While I can’t speak for their earlier work yet, on i’m DADA they shoulder their way into a Venn diagram that includes Boogarins and Ulrika Spacek, creating a dense sound of layered guitars, driving yet restrained rhythms, and vocals that drift across the sonic plane.

Recording in Ensenada, Kyle Hager, Ryan Fuson, Joey Cook, and Julian Ruiz collaborated with Mexican duo Lorelle Meets The Obsolete and producer/mixer/multi-instrumentalist Joo Joo Ashworth (who’s worked with Winter and Automatic) to incorporate keyboards, drones, and dub effects for a sound that cherry-picks from the last six decades of music. Hager is responsible for the lyrics, giving the impression of someone who moves through the world observing from an angle as human behavior (maybe even his own) leads him to question everything. But in the music, he can always count on creating a world where everything is good and true. Join him and the rest of Holy Wave there.

Wet Leg - Moisturizer (Deluxe) (Domino) If you haven’t bought the album yet, now you can get the cool alternate cover previously only sold at the pre-release listening parties, plus frothy live tracks, surprisingly convincing (badass, actually) remixes, a demo, and a new song, which is short but very, very sweet. Long may they reign.

Scritti Politti - Cupid & Psyche ‘85 (Rough Trade) Bringing together the remastered version of the original 13-track CD, which included all the versions I had to buy on 12” singles, plus three unreleased remixes, this is a pure celebration of Green Gartside and David Gamson’s finest moment (although I like Anomie & Bonhomie nearly as much). Of the new material, the Lover To Fall - 12” Dance Mix is especially awesome, over six minutes of inventive sonic wizardry and dance-floor delights. This really is the a “perfect way” to enjoy this classic album!