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A sense of feeling at right angles, life either in the way or passing you by, thematically pervades much of Nation Of Language’s new record.
Nation Of Language singer and songwriter Ian Richard Devaney doesn’t necessarily seem ready for the big time.
Released two years ago, their third album Strange Disciple was named Rough Trade’s best of 2023, whilst their eighties’ tape swapping synth pop sound is both eminently retro but also fresh and contemporary.
Devaney though wasn’t necessarily feeling it. Describing the process by which he laid down the template for its successor, the vibe was most definitely lower of key, the material starting out life as just strummed chords on his guitar.
Done this way, the act itself was one of therapeutic self-care: “It’s a great way to distract yourself,” he revealed, “when you are depressed.”
At least he wasn’t alone though, collaborating again in the recording process with producer Nick Millhiser (LCD Soundsystem) along with the other regular group members Aidan Noell (synths) and Alec MacKay (bass).
If as a collective however they felt Dance Called Memory comes at some sort of critical or commercial fork in the road, the music itself doesn’t reflect indecision or doubt.
Opener Can’t Face Another One is a delicate lament, building from a slight of hand brush across some strings through to an emotional finale.
It’s this sense of feeling at right angles, life either in the way or passing you by, which thematically pervades much of the record.
To point out that this state of entropy can in fact produce some intensely joyous and danceable music seems odd or trivial, but In Another Life, which froths with a New Order in their Paradise Garage elan, is a vital reminder that the time which the source material came from was as culturally and economically grim as now. Light still shines through.
Experience though often punctures the membrane of bystanding. The shimmering post punk vista of Now That You’re Gone soundtracks the personal, as Devaney translates witnessing his parents care for his terminally ill godfather.
Complex under the skin, it forms a centre if not high point of Dance Called Memory, a tribute to qualities which make us human that we’re increasingly propagandized to forget.
That outside stimulus has a cause and effect; the LCD Soundsystem-esque Inept Apollo is conceptually mired in the attacks of impostor syndrome that poke and prod at Devaney’s ego.
The extension of this closing up, of the flight not fight instinct that modern living imprints on our psyche, comes most to a head on I’m Not Ready For The Change, its essence harvested out of a brain fever made by constant transition, the bassy Madchester-era psychedelica nosing as close to the mainstream as Nation Of Language may want to get.
Whilst the thought cloud seems grey to black, Devaney’s intent is positive: “I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy.”
The best way to deliver that is in de-complicating, Nation Of Language being the house band for everyone else at Tech Noir except Sara Connor and the guys with guns.
Under the neon there are still hopes for a better future, one firstly the elegiac Under The Water sketches, but which is then double underlined by In Your Head, a flourish of new romantic gloss as good as anything Nation Of Language’s back catalogue can boast.
If Ian Richard Devany doesn’t always sound like he’s a willing member of the entertainment industry, that’s because it’s true.
It hasn’t held Nation Of Language back though from giving Dance Called Memory an optimism underneath the crashing sine waves.
That’s what can happen when the beginnings are simple.
