Debut Album of the year 2025
A famous agglomeration that apparently lives off its past glories, given its sensational contribution in the past and the fame it has achieved, continues to be a human factory of talent and quality, which unfortunately struggles to emerge due to a thousand factors, one of which is certainly a music press that is not accustomed to considering how much new quality there is under the Mancunian sky.
We are therefore witnessing a constant waste of studies, insights and in-depth analyses that could give us a measure of the truth.
A band arrives to gather it all up, taking us on a journey through the night, chasing away dreams and deciding instead to make us scream with gloom, dragging us into reality and making us mature, enveloping us in amniotic atmospheres pregnant with electronica, dub fans, subtle trip hop outposts, dream pop impulses, electric arpeggios that wink at post-punk without being too obvious, linking musical genres together to deliver a debut album that makes us ask questions and prevents us from seeking escape in diversions, from giving ourselves completely to any form of addiction.
Recorded in Leeds with Alex Greeves as producer, this work is a strategic attempt to separate the routine of quickly absorbed but content-free songs from these twelve compositions, which are a fluid via crucis, between soft steps, dancing steps and torches to illuminate the soul but not the road...
Olive Rees (vocals and guitar), Jake Cottier (guitar and electronics) and Ben McFall (bass) are sound conjurers and diviners, investigators and scientists, illustrators of old tables in today's din, angels with subtle voices yet capable of creating veritable webs to capture the listener through hypnotic flashes.
There are several points of contact with the nineties, the subsequent strategies of an evolved song form, but the Manchester band plays on atmospheres, rarefactions, slow tempo changes, giving the instrumentation and vocals the task of being amalgam, seaweed, wind, oxygen falling on the asphalt, converting the dance floor into a mystical place where reflection is desired and necessary.
A mature, surprising, shocking, fresh album, capable of capturing youthful energy and depositing it before an adult population that will find itself having to deal with a shocking sequence of nourishing gems.
The texts are a vocabulary that seeks to appear in logic, in bold research, using images and stories as a lively lesson in English fiction, striking, equipping the attention of new antennas, tuned to a truly remarkable force. Feelings become stories, bus stops, a hug, a blanket damp with mental nakedness that induces embrace...
One touches the sensation of the heat of the equator, as well as the cold of Antarctica, as if the bus, mad, willing, capable, did not foresee any stops or even the intention to surrender. It is life itself that rises, with its stories, moving, and the trio pilot the experience of a flight without wings, inside the epicentre of the night in which the day is not allowed to appear...
Certifying the end of the past, the trio lights fires full of frost and glitter, with moody geysers tending towards grey and blue, in a seductive and harmonious combination...
The songs are full of mystery, mutilated noises and attitudinal trails towards a pop that preserves everything, making the time spent listening an absolute need for immersion and repetition, becoming a benevolent and necessary toxicity, not attributable to guilt.
With the confirmation, after the two extraordinary singles Angles Mortz and Ascension, that what we are witnessing is an electrified tribal dance, broadened to expand the range of references, allowing the songs to transform into places, temples where prayer is replaced by a toast and perplexity: although young, Nightbus are already aware of the complexity of existence and, in doing so, in this work they draw on wisdom, the impulses that seek a more useful chaos, and guide us through a modern odyssey in which being passengers is a wonderful privilege...
Song by Song
1 - Somewhere, Nowhere
A welcoming instrumental twilight welcomes passengers aboard: hypnotic dance, hints of guitar, a killer but smooth groove opens up the night sky, and the electronic influence of the nineties leaves us with the feeling of a departure full of sweetness and melancholy. Bewitching...
2 - Angles Mortz
One of the two singles that preceded this long-awaited debut is already a manifesto, an emotional and rational passport, with Olive's voice like a fan that encompasses hoarseness and feathers thick with tears. The dream pop approach paves the way for a dance that thrives on a very Sarah Records-style guitar loop and Ben's bass, which surrounds everything like a respectful gait but accelerates the bus journey. And it's secret delirium...
3 - False Prophet
With hints of neofolk, the subtle roar of hip hop and the elegant contortions of Black Box Recorder and Saint Etienne, the piece brings together electric and electronic waves with Olive's vocal register positioning itself beneath the clouds, while the sound beams are fragments of a jungle seeking consecration. Hypnotic...
4 - Fluoride Stare
Rarefaction, cinematic climax, asphyxia and freedom: a roar can be refined by secret textures and move smoothly as this track does, a new disturbing track, a new toxin full of stop and go, fluorescence and fog in the rain. And the journey continues, slippery and sinuous...
5 - The Void
Olive's voice becomes a welcoming temple, with ancient and diverse singers who have marked the last four decades. Measured, powerful, evocative, the guitar is a controlled lash, while the singing oscillates between guttural growls and tender expressions, with the sound envelope seeming to await a change of scenery. Reflective, astute, elegant to the last drop...
6 - Ascension
The other single confirms their original intention: an electric scent that becomes energetic, almost dreamlike, with lyrics that are instead a reflection of reality, in a sensual mix of electronic beats perfectly set between the guitar and bass...
7 - Just a Kid
Massive Attack head to Manchester, wait for the trio to make their contributions, and do so with an almost gothic guitar, while a male crooner awaits the enchanting expressive form of Olive's singing style, which, cleverly, never arrives...
8 - Host
The moment of glory that blesses the entire work: Host is a conscious laboratory, an experiment, a roller coaster ride through noise and anticipation, with a diabolical and painful grin, a trail of petals, an ancient guitar arpeggio surrounded by an enchanting wall of slowly epileptic sounds, until Olive proves herself to be an excellent vocalist, playing with the mood of her voice and vocal registers, and the song becomes a dangerous zone where the bus risks getting lost given the tension. Sensational and masterful...
9 - Landslide
Between alternative, indie rock and dream pop, the song is a celestial dome, sending down sparks and impulses, a glow that runs with the bass and synth smiling at each other and the voice enchanting the bus windows...
10 - Renaissance
A harmonious sense of completeness induces the trio's laboratory to write a fairy tale in waiting, within slides of minimalist sounds and vocals, like a womb giving birth to new life in the dark, and the presence of Morcheeba and Tricky to bless it all...
11 - 7am
The murky soul of Nightbus emerges in the first few seconds of the song, like a sensual, treacherous dance, between guitar riffs and a buttoned-up reverb, while Olive's crooning creates a compelling monologue, awaiting the concave roar of a grated guitar...
12 - Blue In Grey
The journey does not end with the last stop: the feeling that we will travel again with everything we have experienced up to this twelfth track prevails.
Everything ends with an atmosphere that seems to say “see you tomorrow”: the band finishes, exhausting our silent roar of yet another moment of amazement. The whole thing is a game of references, of constructions in which the song form is encircled and we enjoy the tiny changes, the changes in rhythm and the absolute conviction that certain songs seem to be coats suitable for all seasons...
Interview with the band:
1. Hello Jake and Olive, thank you for your time and my sincere congratulations on your
extraordinary debut album. I would like to ask you what elements, if any, you are particularly
satisfied with and which, on the contrary, need further development.
The main accomplishment is how we managed to make so many contrasting songs sound
like they belonged together. We’d say that a big part of that was down to Alex Greaves, our
producer. He's as in tune with the project as we are and I feel like he has quite a distinct
style which glued the album together. I don’t think we have any major developments for this
album, it’s unique in the way that it has songs on there from day one and also songs from
three years later. The album in itself soundtracks the development of Nightbus, ourselves as
individuals and our creative practice. We have been playing catch up with the industry
throughout the past three years and I feel like now we’ve finally caught up.
2. In an in-depth analysis of this work, the songs appear to be connected to each other
beyond the musical genres proposed, suggesting a compelling choral atmosphere. Was this
a deliberate choice? If so, what difficulties did you encounter in its realisation?
Yeah for sure I mean even right in the pre-production stages we discussed it maybe even
being a seamless piece of work so all the songs were expected to sit in the same realm. We
talked about the colours and locations the songs represented, if it was to be a scene in a film
and what that scene would look like. Visually we created a whole alternate universe then we
started recording which is why I think it translated so well.
3. The songs present a mixture of joy, perplexity, a mature pain that does not manifest itself
with excessive emphasis, and an attitude to grasp life in spaces often overlooked by the
human mind. How much of Olive's songwriting was determined by a spontaneous and
intuitive approach, and how much by targeted and specific research?
I think the term concept album is a loose descriptor for this body of work. We kind of did it
backwards. We never intended the songs to relate to what they did but also we write in a
very honest way and it’s always about lived experiences or things subconsciously buried.
Olive -
“I like to create characters and stories to exaggerate meanings. Ultimately, they can’t
be as deep as they are if we don’t relate to them. I guess the specific research is ourselves.
We are quite emotionally intelligent so all you’ve got to do is look inward to realise there are
probably thousands of others that feel the same way”
.
4. The musical aspect of the album highlights an impressive variety of genres and historical
periods, accompanied by impeccable production. Are there any musical genres you intend to
explore in your next compositions?
Olive -
“I've written a few songs that are a bit closer to the rave scene, I've got some solid
indie pop and even western emo. Will any of them make the next album? I'm not sure, I'm
not writing for a specific purpose. I think it works best for me as I won’t overthink it because
my mentality is that no one's going to hear it”
. The next album no doubt will be another
accumulation of things we’ve been into. It’ll be a clusterfuck of genres with a Nightbus twist.
We don't know how that sounds yet but it’s coming together quite nicely.
5. Does the duo structure simplify the creative process? Is the contribution of each member
of the group more evident? To what extent do ideas undergo a transformation when they are
shared?
Olive -
“Absolutely I tend to focus primarily on lyrics and topline melodies whether that be an
obvious vocal melody or a guitar riff. Jake is more production focused and has a better
understanding of the theory side of things which is why I could never write his guitar parts.
He's well rounded and makes a solid foundation. I think my limitations are Jake's strengths
and vice versa and that’s what makes the duo so special”
. We don’t compete for parts, we
simply fill in the blanks for each other and when something's great we respect each other
creatively enough to hold our hands up and say you know what i don’t need to add anything
to that you smashed it.
6. Finally, I would like to ask you how important the live performance of this work is to you. I
would also like to ask you if there are any obstacles that could hinder its realisation. I hope
not, and in the meantime: see you here in Manchester for your gig!
The live element is extremely important. We spent three years using decks and track
because we wanted the music to suit the club / late night environments it was intended for.
It’s always been a blessing and a curse as it’s an easy medium to use however the treatment
of the track became increasingly more difficult in live sound settings as the venues varied so
much. We were literally at the mercy of the venue and sometimes the gigs just didn’t hit the
way they should. We felt the natural progression with this album campaign was to get a
drummer, it’s not an alien suggestion as we use a lot of trip hop and breakbeat on this album
anyway. We feel like it’s breathed new life and consistency into the live performance and we
are so excited to tour it ! I just hope it sonically translates in a way that people are still into it.
It has always been a debate with fans as to whether we get a drummer so I hope the ones that pushed for it are happy haha.
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
8-10-2025
https://nightbusuk.bandcamp.com/album/passenger
