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Artist News CMU Approved Releases
Approved: Nation Of Language
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 9 September 2021
Nation Of Language released their debut album, ‘Introduction, Presence’, just as the world was slipping into COVID-19 lockdown. The follow-up – the appropriately-titled ‘A Way Forward’ – arrives as we (fingers crossed tight) start to emerge out the other side.
The development of the band’s heavily 80s-inspired sound had been several years in development before that first album came out, though – a period reflected in new single ‘This Fractured Mind’.
Vocalist Ian Devaney explains: “After I dropped out of college I spent a number of years delivering pizzas and waiting tables while I lived at home and tried to get a music career going. One ends up spending a lot of time contending with unrealised dreams and feeling jealousy towards those who have moved on”.
“There’s an inferiority complex that can set in”, he adds, “which if unchecked, can lead down a pretty bitter and self-destructive road. This is a song for driving down that road, as indecision and longing and regret cycle together into mania, until finally, at the end, quiet acceptance and peace wash over”.
“As for the recording itself”, he continues, “for those later movements, we messed around with tape machines, running things at different speeds and sometimes backwards, talking about William Basinksi’s ‘Disintegration Loops’ and trying to see how we could achieve a similarly somber, ethereal ambiance, but in a comparatively very small space”.
He concludes: “This one in particular serves as a good example of how, on the album as a whole, we wanted to find a balance between steady motorik endlessness and more spacious ambient moments”.
‘A Way Forward’ is set for release on 5 Nov. Nation Of Language will then be in the UK for a handful of tour dates in January, finishing up at Lafayette in London on 31 Jan. Watch the video for ‘A Fractured Mind’ here:
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