by Matt Watton (@brotinus)
Few bands have literary ambitions, and fewer still capitalize on those ambitions quite like Nap Eyes. The Neon Gate, the band’s fifth album and their first since 2020, achieves a kind of cerebral simplicity, fusing ambiguous and atmospheric musical gestures with alluringly mysterious lyricism. It’s a glimpse into the unpresuming mind of Nigel Chapman, whose introspective, off-the-cuff lyrical experiments and solitary instrumental explorations are the conception and consummation of each of these nine songs. While this is a full band effort, assembled and recorded over the past four years, it is Chapman’s voice – both his nasally, placid singing voice and his idyllic, romantic authorial voice – that carries this record, taking us through the titular neon gate to a colorful, kaleidoscopic world of starkness and beauty.
I fear calling this a ‘lyric-driven’ album will give the wrong impression. Many successful indie songs settle for the ease of ‘lyrics’ without venturing to the lofty heights of ‘poetry,’ but Chapman certainly aspires to these heights, and he gets about as close as one can. The themes are personal but not confessional, grounded in experience but not tethered to the present, in touch as much with the physical flesh as with the immaterial cosmos. True to their Canadian roots, nature is a key preoccupation, whether it be the shivering dampness of the wind and rain (“Eight Tired Starlings”), the faint vantage of the shore from sea (“Tangent Dissolve”), or the divine silence of the snowy winter (“Ice Green Underpass”). Nature is the bridge from the earthly to the celestial, and Chapman vacillates between both realms, at ease but not at home in either.
Musically, The Neon Gate creates an aural dreamscape that relies on repetition and electronic, synthetic timbres, with the band’s more familiar guitarwork an essential but secondary accessory. Nap Eyes’ early work thrived as straightforward rock, aping The Velvets’ and Galaxie 500’s bare-bones open chords and unpretentious yet artful lyrics. Yet their last album, Snapshot of a Beginner, teetered a bit towards the saccharine, revealing too much of themselves and spoiling the mystery. Here, loops and bloops bring this mystery back, resituating familiar indie tones into Chapman’s dreamy world-building. The jaunty electronic drums, compressed funky bass, and twinkling synth on “Dark Mystery Enigma Bird” could be the backing track to a much worse Tame Impala song, but instead, they serve as the foundation for the right type of trippy weirdness. Similarly, the sparse programed beat of “Feline Wave Race” buoys the repeated acoustic chord cycle aloft on psychedelic waves.
Yet (thankfully), the boys haven’t abandoned their electric guitars. In fact, they’ve leveled up their playing to great effect. “Tangent Dissolve” has some truly rapturous shredding, making that axe squawk ala Quine or Verlaine. “Ice Grass Underpass” is the most ‘throwback’ of all the songs, with skronky open chords and a skank-face-inducing ripper of a solo. Throughout, the rousing riffs and swirling bends add layers and lyrical lines over the synth- and acoustic-heavy backdrop, creating a sneaky and subtle collage of tones and textures.
The most artistically audacious tracks are the musical adaptations of two literary masters, Russian Romantic Alexander Pushkin (“Demons”) and Irish Modernist W. B. Yeats (“I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness”). On “Demons,” the sparse music and candid delivery discover a surprisingly modern unease in 19th century demonic fright. As for the Yeats, you’d never guess that synthesizer saw waves and a Gary Numan-eqsue synth-bass are the perfect vehicle for medieval reveries of templar knights and daemonic images.
These songs are poetic, and not just because the words are poems. Their poetry lies in the music itself: Chapman’s reserved but powerful delivery, their lulling, hypnotic repetitions, the avian chorus of squawking guitars and chirping synths. This marriage of words and music captures something ineffable that lies between thought and expression (to borrow a phrase from Lou Reed), and with it, Nap Eyes have produced a beautiful, literary, aspirational, and inspiring work.