Changes come fast and hard in the 21st century, and they don’t let up. Nightshift’s last album, 2021’s Zöe, caught that queasy moment when Brexit-bonkers Great Britain hit the big slowdown of COVID time. The Glasgow combo assembled it in socially distanced fashion, emailing songs from one member to the next in exquisite corpse fashion. And even when the beats were brisk, the music felt suspended in space and time.
But that was then. Homosapien is about what comes after, in several ways. First, the band has undergone a shake up; a couple people left, another joined, and the drummer became the guitarist. Eothen Stearn’s unfussy singing still holds the center most of the time, carving out a space that’s a bit like the Raincoats doing girl-group folk songs in Joe Meek’s studio off the top of the stairs. But around Stearn, the rest of the group sounds pretty excited to be in the same room, playing together like a band’s supposed to do. There’s more chunky guitar and fewer droning keyboards, and Zöe’s probing clarinet has been swapped for some guest fiddling.
But the biggest difference is an underlying sense of renewed dismay wrapped up in nearly every song. If Zöe conveyed the feeling of apprehension that things might fall apart, Homosapien is about the realization that the folks in charge were actively wrecking things while they partied into the night, defying the quarantine restrictions they imposed on regular folks. “Side Effects” recounts the erosion of rights and resources, and “Cut” notes the dubious pleasures of having to rely on a medical system that’s been purposefully ground down by austerity policies. The songs don’t come out and smack you in the face with their concerns; this is pop music, after all, that’s organized around the joy of singing and playing together. But the hard truths are there, embedded in spare verses and catchy choruses. [Trouble In Mind]
—Bill Meyer
