Where did Nite Fields come from? The dream-pop quartet hail from Brisbane, but in another sense, seem to have materialised out of nowhere with their recent uptick in profile and productivity far overshadowing their earlier career. This is a band that self-recorded their late-2012 single Vacation in a shed and released it on frontman Danny Venzin’s microlabel Lost Race, which has the contrarian tagline “unpopular music from Australia”.
Two years later, the band’s debut album is getting a worldwide release through rising Los Angeles label Felte, their singles are racking up serious online attention, and they are on the eve of embarking on a three-month international tour starting in Russia. They’re no longer unpopular, to say the least.
All that increasing traction leads listeners to this album, which repositions the groggy melodies and rumpled bearing heard on Vacation into a charming, well-rounded, and more mature package. Depersonalisation may still be moody and at times downright dour, but at the same time it’s bursting with likeable, accessible traits.
It also sticks fairly close to a lineage of beloved English bands that have as much currency now as ever, from the Cure to Spacemen 3 to Joy Division. In fact, Like a Drone recalls the Smiths’ classic There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, with its opening line (“I go out in the night”) echoing the latter’s (“Take me out tonight”). Nite Fields also look fondly to the Velvet Underground’s droning guitars (Fill the Void) and prolonged sighs (the seven-minute Winter’s Gone) as well as to Silver Apples’ dub-influenced grooves.
But where the first couple of listens prompt such track-to-track comparison to forebears, Nite Fields manage to emerge with a distinctive voice. That’s partly down to Venzin’s darkly sleepy vocals – he makes the National’s Matt Berninger seem like a party animal by comparison – and spare, evocative lyrics, but the changing instrumental palette means that each song offers some passing new detail or zonked-out pedal effect to admire.
That includes the creepy-crawly melodies on the aptly titled Come Down, the soundtrack-y synths and echoing electronic drums of Pay For Strangers, the treated acoustic guitar and unexpected female vocals of Like a Drone, and the ominous depths evoked by Hell/Happy. It’s all an impressive feat of mostly self-recorded production – though the album was mixed by Nigel Lee-Yang of HTRK fame – that causes many songs to sound at once expansive and claustrophobic, glossy and rough.
If those clotted surrounds conspire with Venzin’s singing to produce a downer effect, there are still cheerier bits tucked away in Depersonalisation. The glimmering guitar melodies and hollowed-out romance of the singles Prescription and You I Never Knew should appeal to fans of Wild Nothing as well as counteract the album’s more brooding turns.
“Everything you wanted, I can be,” Venzin sings in the chorus of Prescription. And indeed, whether you’re after swoon-worthy moments of pop or haunted bouts of self-reflection, Nite Fields can give it to you.
• Depersonalisation is released on 3 February
