Nation of Language unveil their strange disciple.
L-R: Ian Devaney, Aidan Noell and Alex MacKay. Image: Shervin Lainez.
American synth-pop trio Nation of Language are Ian Devaney, Aidan Noell and Alex MacKay. Their third album, Strange Disciple, is released on 15th September, with the European leg of their forthcoming tour kicking off the same day before reaching the UK at the end of the month.
Lead vocalist and songwriter Devaney envisages each album building on and complementing its predecessor. Where 2020’s Introduction, Presence was rooted in 1980s new wave and 2021’s A Way Forward added both 1970s synth pioneers and 2000s indie to the mix, Strange Disciple draws further inspiration from comparatively recent records: Freedom by Amen Dunes and Dada by B Boys. “With each album, the goal for me is to start to smear the influences together a little more, because once you start doing that you can start hitting sounds that surprise you as you’re making them, which is always something that I strive for. When you can surprise yourself, it really reinvigorates the whole creative process.”
Strange Disciple is the first album to feature bassist MacKay, who joined last year following the departure of founder-member Michael Sue-Poi, and Devaney found himself writing songs that were more bass-driven than before: “Spare Me the Decision”, “I Will Never Learn”, “Sightseer” and the first of four singles to be released from the album, “Sole Obsession”. “I realized that whenever I was picking up a bass guitar, I was tending to do these more grooving or more Talking Heads-ish basslines. For a while I had this vision in my head of what the third record would sound like and then, once I realized that all of these basslines were going on and I was centring the songs around them, I was like, ‘Oh okay, I guess I’m just going to follow this and see where it goes.’”
“Even when you think you’re done, until you have everything fully mastered there’s always little ways for you to continue to work on things and elevate them”
Other tracks, like “Too Much, Enough” and “A New Goodbye”, took him on a longer journey. “When you have a song that has a number of different movements, finding ways to get between them and to make sure that they each pop, and are satisfying in their own way, at times was difficult but mostly a rewarding challenge. Every stage of the process feels important in navigating that – even during the mastering of the album, which is the last step where you make everything feel like it congeals together, and the volumes and the frequencies make sense together for the whole album. I remember on the beginning of the end of ‘A New Goodbye’, the mastering engineer was able to throw some magic on that part, just to make the drums hit a little bit different so that it catches you from a different side. Even when you think you’re done, until you have everything fully mastered there’s always little ways for you to continue to work on things and elevate them.”
Image: Shervin Lainez.
Nation of Language met producer Nick Millhiser back in 2018 when they opened for his Holy Ghost! shows in San Francisco and LA. “We really hit it off,” Devaney remembers, so when they were looking for another producer for their second album, he seemed an obvious choice. The success of that collaboration led them back to Millhiser for Strange Disciple. “For this album I was trying to be a little bit less precious about the ways that the demos sound that I make at home. To be able to be a little looser with them, and a little more live and unpretentious with them, is something that Nick is very encouraging of. The way he works, and the way the studio is laid out, really facilitates that.”
They’ve also let go of the self-inflicted pressure to produce the ultimate version of songs in the studio, says Noell. “We’re starting to view the recording process as capturing a song in the moment, the same way that a live performance captures the song in the moment, and becoming less emotionally connected to it as the final expression of your art.” Devaney agrees: “Because of the way that we work in Nick’s studio, you can’t jump from one song to another easily, so you really home in on one song for maybe three days. And then, barring any major changes, you mostly accept that’s how the song was on those days, which is scary but liberating.”
Strange Disciple is out September 15th.
Author: Rachel Goodyear