Nightway

ST2 (2019)

Mike

Coming from the DIY-punk community fostered by Dead Broke Rekerds on Long Island, Nightway has taken a decidedly ingenuitive turn: electronic synth. Their latest offering, ST2, has a quirky lo-fi vibe that draws the listener in by way of both catchy hooks and clever lyrics.

The record’s second track, “Livin’ in the Heavy,” moves at a mid-tempo pace filled with ambient layers that give form to the steady synth drums and Joy Division-inspired vocals. The song hits somewhere between War on Drugs and Cold Cave without getting particularly derivative at all. The xylophonic complements throughout the song elevate it in both melody and depth, and also provide a tension to the somewhat brooding lyrical content. The aforementioned lo-fi vibe underpins much of the song as well here.

“Paradise” is the record’s strongest track in both structure and melody. Once again steadied by simple but appropriate drum beats, Nightway brings ambience into a just-structured-enough tone to create a really catchy song here. The vocals are slow and drawled but done so as a balance to the otherwise up-tempo electronic synths. The lyrics are also deceptively existential. Not that one even necessarily needs to hone in on that to enjoy the song, but the introspection in the lyrical content serves to give the song even more depth. The cascading synth leads that pick up about halfway through drive the song, and the record, to an entrancing closure.

What Nightway have crafted on ST2 is a witty batch of idiosyncratic songs driven by electronic synths. Frankly, I’m not all that clued into this end of music but I know that I enjoyed this release a lot. It’s mellow with a subtle sense of angst, and it’s something different. As their brief Bandcamp bio offers, these punkers “got sick of hand cramps and changing strings.” So they created Nightway. This is a release very much worth checking out for those of you who like to keep broad musical horizons.