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Nap Eyes are streaming their new album, I’m Bad Now, via NPR Music and CBC Music ahead of its March 9th release on Paradise of Bachelors (U.S.), You’ve Changed (Canada) and Jagjaguwar (rest of world). NPR praises the band as “masters of subtlety,” evocatively describing the most transparent and personal Nap Eyes’ album to date: “I’m Bad Now slithers through 11 tracks like a phosphorescent python, its diamond-shaped scales emitting both glimmer and gloom.”

LISTEN VIA NPR

LISTEN VIA CBC

While Nigel Chapman composes Nap Eyes songs in their inchoate form at home in Halifax, Brad Labelle (lead guitar), Josh Salter (bass), and Seamus Dalton (drums), who live a twelve-hour drive away in Montreal, augment and arrange them, transubstantiating his skeletal, ruminative wafers into discourses that aim to transcend what Nigel self-laceratingly deems “bored and lazy disappointment art.” The band provides ballast and bowsprit to Nigel’s cosmical mind. The nautical metaphor is not just whimsy: Nap Eyes are all Nova Scotians by raising and temperament, acclimated to life on an Atlantic peninsula linked narrowly to the rest of North America. Brad is a physical guitarist whose lyrical grace is matched only by the dark ferocity of his feedback-laced solos, while Josh and Seamus exercise an unassuming mind-meld melodicism and vigor with their gentle thrumming.

I’m Bad Now constitutes the third chapter of an implicit, informal trilogy that includes Whine of the Mystic (2015) and Thought Rock Fish Scale (2016) (both on sale for 20% off with coupon code BADNOW). The brilliantly reductive title is something we’ve heard children announce verbatim when roleplaying the perennial game of heroes and villains, “good guys” and “bad guys.” “I’m bad now,” they declare, but an equivocal binary is implied: it’s only a matter of time or trading places before they have the capacity for good again. Perhaps goodness will manifest in the multiverse, on a different circuit than this faulty, frayed one. Is that faith or fantasy? And what is the difference? The title is also, of course, a sly Michael Jackson appropriation.

Nap Eyes will tour North America and Europe this spring in support of I’m Bad Now, starting with a record release show in their adopted hometown of Montreal on March 8th. A full list of dates is below.

WATCH/LISTEN TO “I’M BAD”:

WATCH/LISTEN TO “EVERY TIME THE FEELING”:

LISTEN TO “DULL ME LINE”:

For a limited time, Whine of the Mystic (2015) and Thought Rock Fish Scale (2016) are both on sale for 20% off with coupon code BADNOW.

CATCH NAP EYES ON TOUR IN NORTH AMERICA:

PRAISE FOR NAP EYES: 

9/10. I’m Bad Now is the real deal… feels as much a modest masterpiece as Spring Hill Fair or Tigermilk. What sets them apart is the fear and trembling in Nigel Chapman’s reedy monotone and guitarist Brad Labelle, who unleashes the full Verlainian screaming bluebird repertoire. 

– Stephen Troussé, Uncut

Masters of subtlety. I’m Bad Now slithers through 11 tracks like a phosphorescent python, its diamond-shaped scales emitting both glimmer and gloom.

– Beca Grimm, NPR Music

Possibly the catchiest, most immediate thing they’ve ever done, a deceptively thoughtful rocker that ambles along with a little extra verve.

– Peter Helman, Stereogum

Triangulates the sweet spot between the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Marquee Moon. If that sounds like your thing, I promise that Nap Eyes will be very your thing.

– Stephen Hyden, Uproxx

In just four short years, Nap Eyes have made much ado about meaninglessness with rock ‘n’ roll songs that shake just offbeat and smart lyrics wrapped in bemused ennui.

– Lars Gotrich, NPR Music

It’s a tighter, stronger offering of Chapman’s quick-witted, smart lyricism — with room for the band not to take itself too seriously.

– CBC Music

Their relaxed, scholarly indie-rock imagines the Velvet Underground if they ditched the leathers for wool sweaters. But this languor contrasts with frontman Nigel Chapman’s hyperactive mind, yielding songs that are lucid with laser-like focus and freeze-framed detail.

– Stuart Berman, Pitchfork

One of the most satisfying rock bands making music anymore, with a wit and sound both relaxing and quick.

– Duncan Cooper, The FADER