Continuing their extensive tour of Europe, Brooklyn synth-pop trio Nation of Language arrive at Electric Bristol tonight promoting their pristine new album Dance Called Memory. Though the band formed in 2016 – after frontman Ian Devaney was inspired by OMD to start messing around with a keyboard – they have only come to well-deserved acclaim relatively recently. After making their first televisual appearance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show in 2022 and releasing a steady stream of excellent albums (my pick for favourite? The utterly exquisite A Way Forward), they are now headlining venues across the globe. Just this past weekend, the group delivered an exhilarating performance high up the bill at Green Man Festival, and it’s safe to say they arrive at Electric tonight matching that energy.
I am initially concerned about the band’s choice of venue – Electric tends to be overly packed with a muddy sound system – but, to the benefit of the performance, tonight’s show is not sold out. There is plenty of space to manoeuvre but still a rousing atmosphere, the crowd made up of a mix of older and younger folk, a large proportion of whom are donning a similar tucked in shirt look to Devaney himself. And, as keyboardist Aidan Noell gets started on first song ‘Can’t Face Another One’, the sound is clean and crisp. The song itself – also the first on the new album – is melancholic and emotional, the lyrics touching on themes of depression and loss (“The day’s begun / I can’t face another one”) sung with infectious passion by Devaney’s pitch-perfect voice. It is an unexpectedly slow start but works perfectly in warming the audience up for what’s to come.
Without pause various bleeps and bloops from Noell’s synth signal the start of the brilliant earworm ‘Sole Obsession’ (from 2023’s criminally overlooked Strange Disciple). Here we get our first proper look at Devaney’s energising stage presence. Seemingly without absolutely no consequence to his towering voice, he bounds around the stage from right to left, his face contorting in shapes I never knew possible to fulfil the potential of his impassioned and personal lyrics. During the next song ‘Rush & Fever’, he bounces over to Noell’s synthesizer to add some blinking synth lines over Alex Mackay’s hypnotically repetitive bass. The crowd clearly respond to the sentiment of the lyrics, and Devaney’s uncompromising delivery, and join him in the soaring mid-section: “I remember when you couldn’t find the time”.
Soon after we are treated to set highlight ‘September Again’, which really gets the room moving for the first time. Noell’s synth melody is catchy and punchy, and the bass completely fills the room. The lyrics, especially for this time of year, clearly resonate on an emotional level with the audience, as Devaney (almost screaming this time) sings about time slipping away and falling into repetitive cycles. The song is a perfect example of how Nation of Language’s music treads the line between emotion and dance. As Devaney himself has said, “roughly half of those showing up want to dance while the other half want to cry… [and] to keep the live environment palatable to both groups has become a goal moving forward”.
Later in the set, ‘Fractured Mind’ keeps the party going, sporting the trio’s trademark bouncy synths and soaring melodies to brilliant effect. The ecstatic ‘In Your Head’ features a terrific outro where Devaney picks up the guitar to display his chops, backed up with the unceasing momentum of intricate layers of synth to reach a fantastically memorable finale. And an extended version of first album cut ‘Indignities’ is the danciest point of the set, with both Devaney and Noell adding improvised synth lines over an irresistible groove. The band are clearly enjoying themselves more than usual, and every song gets a roaring response from the audience: “you guys are really feeling it huh?”.
Ending the main set with the slinky and anthemic ‘Across That Fine Line’ (a song I first heard on the band’s 2022 KEXP session), Devaney climbs onto an amp to deliver a fierce guitar solo, before climbing back down and roaring into a final singalong chorus. After a short encore, Devaney and co. return to the stage for three final songs, including their first hit ‘The Wall & I’. The song, and the trio in general, owe a lot to bands that have preceded them in their genre, including the likes of New Order, OMD and Joy Division. Indeed, Alex Mackay’s bass tone on ‘The Wall & I’ could have been pulled straight from Power Corruption and Lies and I honestly wouldn’t be any the wiser.
Despite wearing these influences proudly on their sleeves, however, the band have an undeniably brilliant set of tunes and always have a way of adding something unique to their songs. And, in the years since ‘The Wall & I’, the band have experimented with other sounds enough to truly set them apart from their genre forefathers. Nowhere is this more apparent than on set ender ‘Inept Apollo’, the first single of the new album, which features a rigid, rhythmic synth lead bridge before breaking out into a blissful vocal harmony before the verse. It is, altogether, a great song, and a lively end to a brilliant set of music. Even though I am already a big fan of Nation of Language, and have seen them a few times before, I leave the venue with my expectations thoroughly surpassed. This was a confident, well-curated, and passionately performed set of post-punk synth-pop from a band at the very peak of their musical prowess.
Conor Lang
