Relationship is key for Nation Of Language.
It didn’t used to exactly be frowned upon, but couples – even more so married couples – were always viewed as incompatible with a life in the music industry; from Ike and Tina onwards.
Yet now there are seemingly more instances. Take Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, AKA Tennis, whilst two thirds of Pale Blue Eyes are Matt and Lucy Board.
Nation Of Language are also a trio and also feature Ian Devaney and his wife and Aidan Noell; after getting married rather than ask people for a toaster, they requested that friends and family instead made a contribution to the costs of making their first album – 2020’s Introduction, Presence.
Having racked up a three-tier cake’s worth of good press, that was followed the year after by A Way Forward, which traded mournful electronica for krautrock. And now we have Strange Disciple, a record that sees the group constructing more from the chassis of their gigging persona via live drums and a greater emphasis on guitar work.
According to them album number three, ‘Explores themes of toxic infatuation, agony versus ecstasy and the idea that feeling something is better than nothing’.
That each and any of these emotions can be doused from relationships is probably coincidental, but for those familiar with the band’s earlier outings for them none of these songwriting territories are especially breaking new ground.
Evidence? Well, opener Weak In Your Light features the canyon deep sounding lyric, ‘Fumblin’ friend and foe, we’re in rotten light/Starin’ down the simple somethin’ that’ll shape my whole life’, a foreboding picked out against an elementary synth line. Explaining the reference, Devany has confessed: “Sometimes when I feel the most is when I feel hopelessly devoted to something or someone.”
The singer has also revealed that his eureka moment was hearing OMD’s Electricity for the first time whilst riding in his father’s car, and despite the progression towards using real world instrumentation, the band’s sound continues to wear its heart on that well worked early eighties sleeve.
At times the influence is more overt than others, Sole Obsession bearing more than a passing resemblance to early Danceteria-spiked New Order, whilst take away the vocals on closer I Will Never Learn and what’s left is a handsome chunk of the Mancunian’s first classic song Temptation.
Copyright lawyers, that sort of devotion can only be a good if unactionable thing, but otherwise the juxtaposition between sweet melodies and bitter experiences for newcomers will take some getting used to.
On Surely I Can’t Wait the miniature funk riff and bubbling electronics make for solace, but Devaney in prose offers only a personal lament: “Truth is that I’m better off I know/But can’t stand the pain/You rake yourself across the coals/Then you start a love song.”
Sometimes it’s just as effective however to work on the things that affect us all. In this mode Too Much, Enough is not so much the song’s title as an instruction to those entrenched in the business of serving up twenty-four hour outrage bait on our screens. Stacked with little musical ticks, it offers an empathetic shield against the cultural hammers, a Brooklynite Hot Chip pigging out on Kraftwerk to make everyone’s life better.
It’s better because we all need to draw and keep redrawing the dots that connect us as human beings. On Strange Disciple, Nation Of Language always seem on the verge of wanting to tell the listener something profound, but more often than not circle back to say what they said before.
It’s proof that in a band, a friendship or a marriage, the hardest choices often involve each other.
