Time to hail Nightbus

Manchester! You’ve given this yank so much music to believe in. Now, here come Nightbus looming into view. 

From the cold, stark, stabs of Joy Division to the loud, swaggery sneer of Oasis. From the sensitive lad yelpings of Puressence to the moody night shiftiness of The Rain Band (a.k.a. Our Final Invention). 

There is something for everyone in the musical Disneyland known as Manchester.

Flagging the nightbus

I’d already been following Nightbus prior to getting this album for review. In fact I’d pre-ordered the limited dinked edition of this LP a while ago! 

Their previous two 7” singles are in my collection already. Those two releases ‘Way Past Three’ and ‘Exposed to Some Light’ were both great. The first’s b-side ‘Mirrors’ was VERY Joy Division-y, pretty shamelessly with the melody and everything. I’m glad they got rid of that obviousness and found their own sound. Why those two early singles are not on this album I have no idea, ‘Way Past Three’ probably should be on this album. It was fantastic and I loved the video as well. 

Nightbus kind of went low key after those singles. I thought they may have just broken up like so many bands do after a few singles, but they’ve come back with a full album of grouchy little numbers! The basic side of me always imagines riding a bus at nighttime with headphones on listening to this kind of music. Maybe that’s the mood they were after anyways with that name.

We’re travellers in our own bodies; there’s an alter-ego nurturing our secrets, fantasies, shame, and fears, lost in the underworld of humanity. A dreamscape of tabu existence, things that define us but wouldn’t come up in casual conversations. This album is that traveller, the passenger.

Olive Rees

I am the passenger 

I specifically think of two bus rides in my life that meet this criteria. One was a bus ride from Poland to France around 1999 (?), which involved me falling asleep on the shoulder of a random woman I didn’t know. That’s a bit of a mood, innit? The second involved a bus ride in Canada in which they dropped me at a deserted nighttime bus stand for a connecting bus and I waited for five hours. No bus arrived and eventually I had to be picked up. I thought I’d be at that bus stop forever.

So this album Passenger absolutely captures a musical sound, but what sound is that? Somewhere towing between the edges of Siouxsie Sioux-inspired vocals, ‘A Forest’-ish guitars and bass, and Ladytron-like simple machined beats is the sound of Nightbus 2025. Is there a little splash of shoegaze in those vocals now? I do believe so.

The absolute peak sound they get to on this record is the brilliant ‘Landslide’.

ST Darkers

For me, the absolute peak sound they get to on this record is the brilliant ‘Landslide’, which captures an atmosphere without trying too hard. It also reminds me of the somewhat forgotten but wonderful Canadian band The Organ who were heavily Smiths-inspired, but in my opinion had their own tuneful attack!

I don’t understand why track two ‘Ascension’ was released as the first single here. I think it’s probably the weakest song on the album. They were clearly hiding their jewels from you all! Letting you discover them later like a treasure. 

Other gems like ‘Blue & Grey’ and ‘Host’ take the atmosphere they are aiming for to the next level. It really does create a vividly entertaining mixture of dark and moody.

Nightbus is not a complex sounding band at all. But they know what they’re trying to get out of their songs and they go after it. 

What’s the next (musical) stop for Nightbus?

Are they the type of band who are gonna jam out to nine-minute motorbike beats with swirling guitars at their live shows!? I doubt it. But are you listening to them for that reason? I doubt it!  

I didn’t read the 48.5-mile long press release, which accompanied this release, and why would I? This is the kind of music I want to feel mystery around; not read some pre-digestible interpretations about. Fortunately, I found the inscrutability in the music itself. 

I’ve listened to this record many times now and while it is musically rigid, it is certainly musically enjoyable. It hits a certain button inside my library that says night-time-dark-moody-wandering-slightly-lost and that’s a button I often grasp at when I’m at my default state.  

Their second album could be a scorcher. Assuming, that is, they don’t decide to lighten up or create some strange sunshine beach day scenario. I hope they go darker. Much darker. I hope they get noisier. 

Final thoughts

I hope this Nightbus wandering around Manchester with three sketchy passengers decides to get a little bit unhinged, get slightly damaged, and lose some control. It’s a sound worth listening to, as a passenger.

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Passenger, the debut album by Nightbus, is out on 10 October on Melodic.