Nightshift

Glasgow’s Nightshift slip into the silken glow of their third LP, sanding down some of brittle corners of their sound. The band’s pushed past the boundaries of the post-punk that formed the basis of their last two albums, still reveling in a bit of caustic wit and art-rock wrangle, but wriggling closer to New Wave this time around. It’s a pretty surprising swap as the band had seemed pretty set into their starkness, littering past albums with the kind of tensile pop that brought to mind Oh-Ok and Young Marble Giants. On Homosapien the synths become thicker, the guitars strum and twang, and the vocals get an incandescent glow. The ambiance itself blossoms, giving the album a notable expansion of dimension and depth.

Quite a bit of the shift might be attributed to a changeup in roles for the band. Former drummer Chris White (Spinning Coin) moves to the guitar, and he brings a completely different demeanor to the playing, often injecting a bit of unexpected country saunter alongside the New Wave impulses. As he exits, Rob Alexander gives the kit a new snap, driving the songs with chameleonic style beneath Eothen Stern’s more prominent vocals and keys. The record doesn’t fully jettison the band’s aesthetics — rubbered bass and acerbic lyrics that reflect the chaos and crumble of late stage life remain — but they’ve definitely turned a corner towards a second chapter. The shift looks good on ‘em, a confident, catchy, yet cushioned vision of the latter days of post-punk’s slide towards the late ‘80s, laying down the building blocks of the ‘90s sound. If Homestead was still picking up prospects they’d fit right in, but since we’re long since those days, they could land nowhere better than Trouble in Mind.

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