$9.00 – $30.00
Other ways to purchase this release: iTunes | Amazon | Bandcamp
The final weeks of 2015 are upon us, and as our thoughts turn towards the fellowship (and/or fear) of the holiday season, it’s fitting now to announce our first release of 2016.
We actually heard the second Nap Eyes album, Thought Rock Fish Scale, before we heard their arresting debut, Whine of the Mystic. And as compelling and critically acclaimed as the latter record was, it was Thought Rock Fish Scale that initially transfixed us. It’s simply one of the most beautiful, singular guitar pop records we’ve ever heard.
Recorded live to tape, with no overdubs, on the North Shore of Nova Scotia, Nap Eyes’ quietly contemplative sophomore record refines and elaborates their debut, offering an airier, more spacious second chapter, a bracing blast of bright oceanic sunshine after the moonlit alleys of Whine of the Mystic. But the briny, cold Atlantic roils beneath these exquisite, literate songs, posing riddles about friendship, faith, mortality, and self-doubt.
To celebrate the release, Whine of the Mystic will be on sale for 20% off in all formats for the duration of the pre-order period, until February 5. Use the coupon code NAPEYES during checkout.
Canadian customers, please order directly from our friends at You’ve Changed Records, who are releasing the album up North in the native land of Nap Eyes.
The deluxe LP, pressed on 150g virgin vinyl, features a heavy-duty chipboard jacket, full-color inner sleeve with lyrics, and a download coupon; the CD is housed in a gatefold chipboard jacket. Pre-orders include an immediate 320k MP3 download of the first single, “Mixer,” which the good people at SPIN have premiered here.
Nap Eyes’ 2014 LP Whine of the Mystic was a brainy sort of daydream. Build on the genteel lilt of windswept electric guitars, swooning dramatic tension, and songwriter Nigel Chapman’s bookish lyricism, it felt sorta like falling asleep with a Velvets record playing in the distance and your nose in some weighty tome. It was deftly written indie pop told through sleepy distance, and today the Nova Scotia natives are returning with “Mixer,” the first single from their sophomore LP Thought Rock Fish Scale, which brings with it the promise of more rambling romanticism. Over a bassline that’d otherwise feel at home on a Chills record, Chapman details a party and wondering “if [he’s] really here,” a distressing, nihilist musing that makes his otherwise warm pop song feel wonderfully and beautifully frigid — frozen in time and place, despite its humid surroundings.
– Colin Joyce, SPIN
We anticipate shipping pre-orders about a week in advance of the February 5 release date. All pre-order customers who place orders by January 29 will be entered into a drawing for a test pressing and a PoB t-shirt.
“Nap Eyes moves from psych-riffs to astrophysicists; from Rubaiyatic poetry to punctuated bass, in easy fluid motions. Chapman’s calm, steady voice can be as pained as Bob Dylan’s, and his lyrics can be just as profound.” – Noisey
“Unkempt rock songs that are steeped in tradition yet impossible to pin down. This guy spends his days studying the infinite complexity of seemingly simplistic cells, and his songs function the same way. There are worlds inside these little three-chord laments.” – Stereogum
Photo by Colin Medley.