A Record for the Intellectual Slack Rockers
Nova Scotia band Nap Eyes create the type of music that every laggard Lou Reed fan dreams of. Their album Thought Rock Fish Scale was recently released and is, without a doubt, worth a listen.
The first and most important thing to address about this album is the vocal similarity that Nigel Chapman, the lead singer of Nap Eyes, has with Lou Reed. Chapman is certainly channeling some serious Lou Reed styled vocals on this record and he does it without sounding overly brazen or impressionistic. Rather, he sounds genuine and the candor in his vocals saturates the lyrics and the obsequiousness to which they resign themselves reflects back on the listener.
One song that certainly stands out is “Stargazer.” Out of all the songs on the record, this one appears to encompass everything that is enjoyable and unique about this band. Of course, we have Chapman’s Lou Reed inspired vocals, but the instrumentation that surrounds his voice sounds like a beautiful marriage between the sunny, simplistic sound of The Beach Boys combined with the noise drenched sound of a Sonic Youth song.
While some albums thrive off of singles, this record flourishes by having each song complement the other. The result is a record that allows the listener to have an experience. Some songs are less memorable than others, but it is important to listen to the record as a whole, because the absence of one track would be unfair to the listener. Every song works together and is a strengthening of the track before it.
There is a niche for this band and that happens to be the blasé, intellectual slackers that would find meaning in the lyrics. One might think that he or she does not belong to that certain subset of society, but it does not take a laid back, erudite individual to identify with this or have a strong emotional reaction to this music. This album garners just as much as an impassioned response as it does a cerebral one.
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