by Ljubinko Zivkovic (@zivljub)
What would actually characterize certain music as intellectual rock? Would it be just the words and proclamations of a certain artist/band, or does it have to include their music? Of course, such artists themselves can be called intellectuals if you only consider what they say, but if they transfer it to their music, and it is in the realm of rock as a genre, well, then their music can deserve that intellectual tag as well.
With the Glasgow, Scotland collective Nightshift, it seems we can actually talk about both. The band only started in 2019, comprising four musicians already playing elsewhere - artist Eothen Stearn (2 Ply & Difficult), Chris White (Spinning Coin), Andrew Doig (Robert Sotelo, Order of the Toad) and Georgia Harris (Slippy & Pelvis). We encounter that intellectual tag right from the start - they describe themselves as a "multi-directional audio ensemble," and you can certainly imagine that they might have picked up the name of the band from that Commodores soft soul hit of the same name (Lionel Ritchie included in the whole package too).
Yet, what about that intellectual tag when the actual music comes into play? Well, it is certainly all over Made Of The Earth. From the moment “Hologram” opens the album, you realize Nightshift are all over the place. Still, the pieces they pick up are so well chosen and so seamlessly integrated within, that you get a sense of a very original sound that is at the same time familiar. The listener doesn’t get the true sense whether Nightshift picked these pieces somewhere else or they simply came up with them on their own. This is particularly true of songs like “Supermarket” or the title track, which evolve and revolve, without taking any excess time at all. You can try to give a genre tag to Nightshift's music, but it will have to include quite a few of them, or you can simply use one - great music.