by Chris Coplan (@CCoplan)
How do you view your relationship to pop culture? Here’s my own all-encapsulating answer: During a recent interview for a comics site I edit, I earned a warm but slightly bemused look when I said stories are like near and dear friends to me. There's a warmth and connection that transcends the usual parameters some might (Not. All.) ascribe to these "artifacts" — I engage with these tales the same way people relate to a personal story or hand held in comfort.
It's just as true of music. Don’t believe me? Listen to Glasgow's own Nightshift. The band’s latest, Homosapien, evokes that same deep humanity (even down to that perfect title), not just because of the band’s own shifting dynamics — members lost, gained, and assigned new roles since 2021’s Zöe — but how much this pure connection and relatability inform our own experiences with the eleven track affair. Like an old friend or a familiar lover, this connection is something that sticks around in the very crevices of your bones.
Like an actual person, Homosapien is multifaceted and complicated sonically, but in a way that feels cohesive and collective (like a friend who is an anarchist but also a devout knitter). "Crystal Ball" plays like a sweet slice of '90s grunge; "Together We Roll" has some interesting Kraftwerk-ian tinges to its indie rock drawl; "Your Good Self" blends acid-jazz and pub-rock like beer spiked with mescaline; and "Y.T. Tutorial" and "Crush" are the most directly rollicking ditties. They're generally little choices and tweaks, but they make such a massive difference in Nightshift's campaign for engagement.
Each new idea/concept shows an increasingly dynamic sensibility, a patchwork of beliefs and passion that come together with the intensity but imperfection of a real person. Heaps of bands operate with a mixed bag of inspirations, but Homosapien shows that Nightshift's own bag is organic, unassuming, and both indicative of the band's mettle as much as it's a half-cocked explanation of their energy and devotion. On the one hand, we don't get nearly as much variation in terms of the lyric content across Homosapien. Sure, the mighty and triumphant "Cut" is about sorting through the continued ghost of Brexit, and "Your Good Self" instead focuses on "self-preservation and community". Of course, there’s prerequisite love songs like the uber jangly "Phone," but, again, it's less about how much variation and shading/texture we get and more about what it all means. The shared thematic end goals seem to capture something decidedly present and current about the world while mixing a kind of universal quality a la all great pop music.
The record's own press release comments how it's ironic that the band are "sculpting their most succinct and tuneful music yet from this potential chaos," but I'd go further and say that it's not just about offering comfort and familiarity amid the madness, but a kind of grander theme. That no matter how worlds shift and sounds rise and fall, there are ideas and sentiments that remain perpetual. Even if those are "government dumb" and "love sucks," there's a sustained authenticity that we need more of. It's not posturing for the sake of a certain sound or creative end goal — that's just the way life be sometimes, right?
Part of what makes the band so continuous in their approach is primarily the work of singer/multi-instrumentalist Eothen Stearn. It's Stearn's vocals — which maintain a constant mix of earnestness, irony, and deep emotion — that imbue each slightly-varied track with a weight and heft, with some gradation across the LP. "Cut" is extra stoic and haunting; "Phone" has a more dreamy doo-wop-ian vibe; and "Y.T. Tutorial" has a proper power-pop croon.
It's those vocals that always manage to draw a through-line when each song may start to differ, bringing everything back in a way that we see the arc between these songs in a really noticeable and compelling way. As if the differences seem to fade in significance and what we hear and feel across the LP is some extended, winding conversation or the daily life of some soul grappling with the good and bad of it all. Either way, it's an approach that lets these little sonic tinges shine even as they're made to be another part of this rich sonic quilt we get wrapped up into (either for cuddling or building a blanket fort).
It's not just Stearn, either, as multi-instrumentalists Chris White, Andrew Doig, and Rob Alexander extend and augment their bandmate’s efforts with some inventiveness and precision. When it comes to letting Stearn's overall presence shine, the rest of the band have several tools at their disposal. They're really great at, say, creating all these pockets to fill ("Together We Roll") or keeping the chaos tight and confined while still quite effective ("Your Good Self"). They're also extra skilled with back-up and harmonies; "Together We Roll" and "S.U.V." both benefit from these unsung walls of vocal magic that uplift and add both jagged bits and smooth corners to Stearn’s own performance.
In some ways, the band do let themselves mostly shore things up, but that doesn't mean they're not also big stars. If anything, their skill and planning are another side of the record's overarching, massively appealing humanity. Added layers that continue to get us to connect with the band and understand the blend of personality and spontaneity that inform this LP. It's the weight and gravity that this record needs, and how to give so much without over-complicating what makes Homosapien so utterly beaming and undeniably alive.
I've told other people about my "creative constructs are my amigos" experience, but this is the first time I've really worked out some of those larger feelings. As I see it applied to what Nightshift have done here, I feel a few different things. One, I hope I'm not alone — more people need to engage with music, comics, film, art, etc. with this sort of unabashed directness and earnestness. Two, great records like this make that "friendship" feel so breezy and natural, as if such devotion and intimacy are the only rational reactions/responses. Whether I'm a lonely weirdo or not, Homosapien connects me with this pool of deep humanity that I'm more thankful for than a 5 a.m. ride to the airport.