Night Moves/ Johnny Delaware

Byrdhouse Records presents Night Moves and support Johnny Delaware on Wednesday January 28th at No Fun located at 275 River Street, Troy, NY!

Doors- 7PM, Music-8PM

18+ (or under with legal guardian) and valid ID/ First Floor Venue- No Stairs to Enter/ $20 DOS

More About Night Moves:

Bless its battered body, but the Night Moves tour van is a piece of shit. It is your standard-issueblue Ford E-350 now months away from its 25th birthday, the sort of vehicle that occasionallyprompts so-called normal folks to give the grimy musicians inside suspect stares. The catalyticconverter has been stolen three times, so it’s now permanently straight-piped; the exhaust leaksthrough the holes and cracks in the sides, slowly gassing anyone inside. The wheel wells areshambles. And while John Pelantwas writingDouble Life, Night Moves’fourthLP and first insix years, someone swiped the license plates just after he had paid for new tags.God fuckingdammit, he remembers thinking.Who the hell steals a license plate?

But Pelant soon sublimated his frustration, turning his vision of a thief who had“borrowed”theplate in order to commit more crimes elsewhere into one of the most winning tunes in NightMoves’country-soul-psych-rock catalogue,“Daytona.”As sun-swept synthesizers and pedalsteel curl around stuttering drums, Pelant offers an empathetic portrait of someone doingwhatever is necessary to reinvent their lives.“Daytona, you only wanted a win,”he opens thefinal verse.“Daytona, no chance I’ll see you again.”There’s irritation in hisvoice, sure, butmostly there’s acceptance, an understanding that he cannot comprehend someone else’sdifficultiesand that he has plenty of his own.That is the spirit that animates and enlivensDouble Life, a cozy and cool LP built largely from astring of very rough breaks that Pelant and Night Moves have navigated in recent years. Therewas the unexpected death of a father-in-law, then a drummer whose skin sloughed off duringrecording due to contact dermatitis. There werefriends arrested for makingmistakes in troubledtimesandassortedpals struggling withsobriety and sanity. And there was, once again,the ever-vexing question for artists about when they’re supposed to step intotheresponsibilities ofadulthoodand maybe away from the lifelong compulsion to create, especially asPelant startedthinking seriously about marriage for the first time in his life. Pelant is the sort of songwriter whostarts with the music—inspired of late by Glen Campbell and Bobby Caldwell, Cleaners fromVenus and early’90s country, Panda Bear and (as ever) Gram Parsons—and then writes lyricsonly after he’s sat with the tune a spell.But this time, thesesongsare direct documents ofPelant’s life as he searches for silver linings or at least valuable meanings duringa moment whenvery little seemed golden.Double Lifeis about moving through, not moving on.

Pelant started writingDouble Lifein the Minneapolis duplex he shares with his fiancée, Tasha.But those early and sometimes-forlorn drafts rightfully bummed her out, especially since some ofit spokeofher own woes. So Pelant started treating Night Moves’little rehearsal room—stuck inagrim industrial zone of the city, surrounded by garbage dumps and foundry fumes—as anoffice, showing up with workmanlike diligence to keep crafting demos.That proved to be a tough hang, too: Separated by paper-thin walls, Pelant soon figured out hisdrug-addledneighbor not only lived there but would also erupt into near-daily shouting matcheswith his partner. He’dspill Big Gulp cups of piss in their shared hallway. It wasworrying, butPelant kept at it, anyway. He’d drive around,deliveringhard liquor and wine at his new day job,whereDef Leppard’s“Photograph”seemed to play always, the hit hammering through hishangovers.Heponderedcycles of addiction and thoughta lot about death, apt since that gig was next toanotherwarehouse that sold funeral supplies. He listened to works in progress as hejockeyedthe booze, working until he and the band felt they had the core of a record ready.Again, not as easy as it sounds: Night Moves cycled through two producers who had firstsounded like dream collaborators but just didn’t fit their vibe. Once again, Night Moves opted toreturnto their own practice space, recording the bulk of the album there after capturing basictracks at Minnesota’s legendary Pachyderm. The decision afforded the band, for thefirst time,the challenge and luxury of producing themselves, of making every decision about tone andarrangement and timing before passing the songs to Woods sonic mastermind Jarvis Tavenierefor mixingand co-production.Those travails were, turns out,worth it.Double Lifeis at once the most candid andimpressionistic Night Moves album yet, built on personal experiences but writtenso that you canmap your own life onto these songs, too. Witness, for instance,“HoldOnTo Tonight,”akaleidoscopic soul tune that was inspired bythatdeath in the family; it’s a snapshot from aboozy night alone, when you stumble into the realization that the only thing you’re holding ontois fading memories. “Ring My Bell”is its musical and emotional counterpart, withPelantextending an invitation to be asked for help whenever times get inevitably tough, allabove thespring-loaded rhythm of drummer Mark Hanson and bassist Micky Alfano.“You’ve got asadness hanging in your eyes,”Pelant sings, slipping into a bridge that Steely Dan would haveloved.“Well, I just wish that I could change your mind.”This song, at least, offers a fightingchanceto do just that.Night Moves has a repeated joke when they’re on the road, driving from town to town in theirbruised van:“Ican’t believe I have to do this again,”they say, a reference to the surrealistrepetition of shows, parties, hangovers, and long hauls that define touring. That line shows upduring“This Time Tomorrow,”a could-have-been Petty hit updated with the malaise andwanderlust of modern life.“I can’t believe I have to do this again, oh this again, this timetomorrow,”Pelant sings alongside Charles Murlowski’s mocking riff.“Laughing at the joke, butthe joke’s my life.”It can feel that way for all of us sometimes, right?But onDouble Life, NightMoves does not retreat from the struggles and complexities of life. They, instead, double downwith songs that stare them in the face and turn forward on their own terms.