Nap Eyes :: “The Neon Gate” - Paradise Of Bachelors
While dislocating from the pure insanity of the last near half-decade, Nova Scotia’s very own Nap Eyes, have finally followed up the release of 2020s “Snapshot For A Beginner”, with the highly anticipated dormancy of “The Neon Gate”. An eager exploration of the band’s reminiscent reverberation and blissful youth, the album’s interior relapses into the landscape of reflection, childhood catharsis and steady studies of a soulful soundscape. Having spoken to Nigel on The Self Portrait Gospel Podcast earlier last year, it was very apparent among the band as well as its listeners that their eagerness to enlighten the airwaves once again was beyond desire and creative justification.
Making up for lost time is quite an understatement, as missing memories from the road and the cosmic connection within the blissed business of music making were devastated in the blink of an eye. Nap Eyes have officially dusted off the entirety of the sonic skeleton and intend to celebrate the forever changing world in which we now all live in. Relying on the poetic paralysis of philosophy and the ever-changing controversy of pop music, Nap Eyes linger in the throbbing moonlight of a static flickering TV someplace concrete and visceral for what reminds people of a time and place both overlooked and too far gone for resilient replication. While settling into the depths of the fond familiarness of the band, Nap Eyes welds us to the melodic macabre of tenacity and the quick-witted vocabulary of Chapman’s genius across the album’s 9 tracks of custom curated commandments. Opening with the “Eight Tired Starlings” and moving through a flourishing ecosystem of sound and textured rationality, “The Neon Gate” explores an atmospheric altar of playful trickery and thematic excellence in vulnerability.
Released on the band’s home away from home on Paradise of Bachelors, “The Neon Gate” is a splendidly sublime listen from start to finish with numbers such as “Demons”, “Isolation” and “Passageway”, all sifting through the hot and holy sands of time, while a sacrificial volunteering of both the heart and soul brings the band to an entirely untouched plateau of perfect pursuit. Where silence meets the soothingly shape-shifting sorcery of a structureless mountain of melody, the band delivers a wonderful collection of carbonated truths riddled with scientific sing-a-longs, cautionary tales and the animated atmosphere of just what makes this band a universally unique force of unparalleled power.
