Manchester Music - Nov 2006

Manchester’s The Nightjars are the kind of band who sneak up on the radar, release their payload and then disappear as we all sit in the resulting mushroom cloud of tunes, with “what the ..?” buzzing round our cerebellum.

”Cease To Exist” is an edgy collection of timings and bustling guitars. Ollie Wright’s vocals have the steady consistency and inherent monotone tunefulness that makes bands like The
Answering Machine and Polytechnic so compelling. Sound tracking their visions of trips through inner city streets and the paved environs of a modern city, Nightjar combine their jagged bites of guitar with a fluid bass and floating riffs – contradictory styles that then morph into a clipped series of anthems and hypnotic theme tunes, which are eventually set alight by their rock ambitions.

“Disabuse” takes the organically looped guitar splashes into another dreamier realm. A sparse verse is cascaded into an increasingly twisted whirl before veering onto another post rock trajectory, increasing its pulse and splintering off its vitriolic instrumental ideas like an early era Sonar Yen. You can hear the 'Youth / Pavement influences shining through, yet Nightjars’ own zestfully imprinted, brittle rock is rewritten for our modern northern landscapes.

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