Nap Eyes are pleased to announce the release of their new album, I’m Bad Now, on March 9th via Paradise of Bachelors (USA), You’ve Changed (Canada), and Jagjaguwar (rest of world). The acclaimed Canadians’ ambitious, allusive third album achieves a new sonic clarity, depth, and range to match the effortless melodies and extraordinary writing. It’s the band’s most transparent and personal set of songs to date, in which singer Nigel Chapman interrogates social, psychological, and spiritual milieus for clues about the elusive nature of knowledge.
Album opener “Every Time the Feeling,” shared today via NPR Music in the form of a lyric video, arrives with a subdominant chord and a subdominant attitude, only switching to the first person in the (repeated) final verse, for this devastating admission:
Oh I can’t tell what’s worse:
The meaninglessness or the negative meaning
But I figured out a way
To get on with my life and to keep on dreaming
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). 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.
While Nigel composes Nap Eyes songs in their inchoate form at home in Halifax, Brad Loughead (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 Salter and Dalton exercise an unassuming mind-meld melodicism and vigor with their gentle thrumming.
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. A full list of dates is below.
Watch Nap Eyes’ “Every Time the Feeling” Lyric Video:
Nap Eyes Tour Dates:
Thu. February 8 – Hull, QC @ Megaphono Festival,
Thu. March 8 – Montreal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo
Tue. April 3 – Toronto, ON @ The Baby G
Wed. April 4 – Detroit, MI @ Deluxx Fluxx
Thu. April 5 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop
Fri. April 6 – Chicago, IL @ Schubas
Sat. April 7 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
Mon. April 9 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway
Tue. April 10 – Nashville, TN @ The High Watt
Thu. April 12 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
Fri. April 13 – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
Sat. April 14 – Asheville, NC @ The Mothlight
Mon. April 16 – Washington, DC @ DC9
Tue. April 17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
Thu. April 19 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere – Zone One
Fri. April 20 – Allston, MA @ Great Scott
Mon. April 30 – Copenhagen, DK @ Ideal Bar at Vega
Tue. May 1 – Aarhus, DK @ TAPE
Wed. May 2 – Berlin, DE @ Monarch
Thu. May 3 – Hamburg, DE @ Hafenklang
Fri. May 4 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso (upstairs)
Sat. May 5 – Cologne, DE @ King Georg
Sun. May 6 – Gent, BE @ Dok
Mon. May 7 – Paris, FR @ Supersonic
Tue. May 8 – London, UK @ Oslo Hackney
Wed. May 9 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare And Hounds
Thu. May 10 – Glasgow, UK @ Hug & Pint
Fri. May 11 – Manchester, UK @ Soup Kitchen
Sat. May 12 – Brighton, UK @ Prince Albert
I’m Bad Now Tracklist:
1. Every Time the Feeling
2. I’m Bad
3. Judgment
4. Roses
5. Follow Me Down
6. You Like to Joke Around with Me
7. Dull Me Line
8. Sage
9. Hearing the Bass
10. White Disciple
11. Boats Appear [CD/digital only]
