The Nudge – Dark Arts (Keen For A Nudge)

The Nudge release their new LP Dark Arts based on the back of their dynamic live shows of psychedelic jams and spaced out stoner riffs. Featuring just three tracks of increasing length and complexity, Dark Arts is an attempted journey of transporting the listener into The Nudge’s woozy world.

Opening the LP with the title track, Dark Arts forms an accessible starting point for those new to The Nudge’s genre-mashing style. Starting off with drums, fuzzy guitar licks and bass, the track slowly morphs from droning riffs into a shuffling jam, all via an ambient synth section and squealing feedback. On an album with three tracks however, Dark Arts (coming in at a relatively normal four minutes) feels like a warm-up song to shake off the cobwebs before the huge jams to come.

The album starts to open up with middle track The Balance Changes. Immediately psychedelic influenced, it veers from the spacey phased drums and half time slowdowns of Tame Impala (Mind Mischief and Half Full Glass of Wine especially) to influences closer to home such as Weta, especially in the breathy singing and propulsive guitars. At 13 minutes long, the tracks punchy moments touch upon psychedelic stoner rock, before giving way to an atmospheric Echoes inspired section with soft keys and watery guitar reminiscent of David Gilmour. The energy picks up again at the close, with the thick guitars and other various elements being reintroduced until the song finishes on a bizarre psychedelic crescendo.

The final track Bring Me Your Love 1 2 3 is effectively an entire second side of the album. Clocking in at a monumental 24 minutes it starts as an instrumentally dense first section encompassing plucked acoustic guitar, choral voices, ocean ambience and synths. The second half functions as a guitar jam session that veers from Cream to The Doors to Nick Cave’s heavier moments. Despite these wide ranging styles however the changes never feel unnatural, it’s a song that uses all of the space that its length of 24 minutes affords it to maximum effect.

With such little focus on vocals and lyrics, Dark Arts has an incredible attention to detail in the melodies and structures of the songs. Radical changes are handled slowly and delicately, there are no “drops” into heavy sections or abrupt passages of delicate instrumentation, rather the entire record feels like it’s slowly shapeshifting as elements drop in and out, and before you know it the entire mood of the song has changed and you’ve barely noticed. It’s a skill clearly born of a long history of playing live together, and The Nudge manage to translate that aspect of their showmanship into a recorded format extremely effectively.

However while the playing ability and structuring is outstanding, Dark Arts can at times feel overly influenced to the point of being distracting. Right throughout the record there are sections that give a strong sense of déjà vu. The Balance Change’s slow Pink Floyd–ish section is fantastic because it’s almost identical in tone and style (and key!) to parts of the already fantastic and iconic tracks Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Echoes. Similarly the opening section of the track, with its fuzzy riffs, off kilter keys and prominent phased drum rolls is so reminiscent of early Tame Impala that it almost wasn’t a surprise when the whole song slowed down and got deep and groovy, just as Kevin Parker was a fan of doing with his songs in that period. As enjoyable as the jam session to close Bring Me Your Love 1 2 3 is, again the different styles seem less like influence and more paying tribute at best, cover at worst.

Perhaps this is simply an unintended hangover from trying to translate a live experience into a record. Live audiences who see a jam band expect to hear snippets of their favourite songs cleverly inserted into tracks that are played, however in a recorded setting it can become distracting and an easy fall back at the expense of pushing harder to craft more original material. It’s a shame, because the songs themselves clearly show The Nudge have the chops and ability to create epic and engaging tracks, and while Dark Arts is both of those, it feels more a product of its influences than something truly original and outstanding.

Zac Fairhall

Click here to listen to The Balance Change from Dark Arts: