Alternative Ulster Feature - May 2006

A little healthy chaos for sure, but The Nightjars had it all under control. With opening number ‘Bass Drum’ they caught everyone off guard; it is sudden and, typifying the entire set, it was utterly engaging

I really like whites of the eyes kinda gigs”, Ollie Wright, the lead singer and bassist had told me earlier. “Ideally where there is not even a stage, just a bunch of people right in your face”.

At a time when many bands are monotone 4/4 beat exposés and hi-hat lead, The Nightjars are something more sonically fierce and as Ollie admitted to me, “It’s got to be interesting instrumentally, or we just don’t do it”. So the time signatures of their tunes evolve and fall, gather up and breakout all the time and you go with them through each turn.

It is bizarrely apt then, that this band’s baptism of sorts was overseen by priest elder Damo Suzuki. Yes, this strange event occurred in May of last year, when the group played as the former Can vocalist’s backing band for the Manchester leg of his solo tour. This was only their second outing as The Nightjars.

How did we get to this noise then?

“Me and Phil [Phil Arnold, the group’s guitarist] had a band together in Derby, called Lazer Guided, which is from the Spiritualized album” Ollie explained. “It was noisy, it was ten minute long instrumentals and it was poppy as well. It was played with teen enthusiasm and a candidness that seemed to charm a few people”.   

Charmed it did. With Lazer Guided they got a few local 7”s out and played a mini tour. This band would soon wind down and the two lifelong friends came to Manchester by the route of University. After a while, the two began to get The Nightjars together. It started with the arrival of guitarist Dan Sims, via a connection with Manchester’s premier guitar beat missionaries, The Longcut, whose bassist “recommended Dan, his house mate.  He introduced us and we got on like a house on fire”, explained Ollie.

The final piece of the puzzle took the shape of that serial abuser of drums, Seamus O’ Kane, who came via a “desperate internet search”. Seamus is one of Northern Ireland’s own errant sons and along with Dan, he has help to transform The Nightjars. “Left to our own devices, me and Phil would probably be a lot more lo-fi, a bit more mellow, really”, acknowledged Ollie, “but with Dan and Seamus in there, it just gives it a bit more backbone”.

By January 2005, the band was in place and things quickly started to come together. They found their sound and got it down soon after, recording their first demo in May of that year.  This was done with the help of their close friends, Polytechnic. “They very kindly did some tracks for us, which helped us out a lot.  It got us some good shows around Manchester and helped us into the position we are now, so yeah, we owe them”. You do Ollie, and for me, this two-track demo is a little treasure, really.

First of the tracks, ‘No Kicks’ has a ‘Venus in Furs’ cross of atonal guitars feel to it.  A hall of mirrors song, it powers beyond any real repetitive chorus into something more sublime.  At 2.36 minutes long, it feels like a spark of song that soon consumes itself, rather than continue in the self-sustaining song structures that we all know so well. ‘ MDMA’ on the other hand, stands as the perfect counterpoint to the taut ‘No Kicks’. Opening in a state of languor, the song has The Nightjars’ trademark lucent sonic quality to it.   On this track, singer Ollie seems all stoner-eyed and gone as he bangs on the about his coming up, via some well crafted lyrics that we can all relate to.  Together, they are songs that are genuinely original and could lead you to sit up all night talking about forming a band, smoking till bleary eyed dawn breaks and you find yourself hemmed in with records strewn all around you and the bottles empty. Yeah, they’re good.

Today, with their reputation rising, The Nightjars have experienced their initial forays into the world of the A & R man.  Against this backdrop, they have recently completed a three-track follow-up demo and it carries on where Demo #1 left off. Financed by a major label, it shows that they ’re developing nicely, opening up a poppier edge on one tune (‘Cease To Exist’) and shutting it firmly down on the other (‘Disabuse’). Ollie is happy with the results and so he should be. The reaction, “has been quite mind blowing”, Ollie told me, “ pretty interesting and quite weird but very, very gratifying. And yeah, we can’t wait to just get some tracks out there, on the radio and shit.  We shall see what people make of it and I am just dead, dead excited”. 

They make some noise, all four of them together. Coming to the end of their set that night, I realise that I haven’t heard a band sound so ‘live’ since I first saw The Longcut years before. They finish with ‘MDMA’, and true to the gig’s momentum, it is far faster and more urgent than it was recorded. Ollie had warned me about it before, joking that “It all gets really fast and howling and any whip dancers or anything like that would be more than welcome”. I think he’s serious and as they go on, the tune I thought I knew so well is obliterated in what sounds like a final heady catharsis.

That would be The Nightjars then.

Alun McKeever

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