Pressing Concerns: Nightshift, Sylvia Sawyer James, Goodbye Wudaokou, Manners Manners

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Taking us into the homestretch of July in style, the Monday Pressing Concerns for this week looks at three albums that came out last week (LPs from Nightshift, Sylvia Sawyer James, and Manners Manners) and a record from last month (an album from Goodbye Wudaokou). A classic blog post!

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Nightshift – Homosapien

Release date: July 26th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Y.T. Tutorial

I’ve been charting the course of Glasgow post-punk/art rock group Nightshift since the early days of this blog–we joined them at the beginning of 2021 with the release of Zöe, their second LP and first for Trouble in Mind, then checked in on them with Made of the Earth, a tape of “outtakes and unreleased tunes”, later the next year. At the time, a third proper Nightshift album was said to be imminent, but Homosapien didn’t arrive until the middle of 2024–delays happen, of course, and I wouldn’t have bothered remarking on it if the band hadn’t singled out significant lineup changes as the reason the record took so long to complete. Band co-founder David Campbell has left the group, as has multi-instrumentalist Georgia Harris–the trio of Eothen Stearn, Andrew Doig (also of Dancer), and Chris White are still present, but the latter of the three has switched from drums to guitar, making room for new member Rob Alexander to pick it up on percussion. With all of that in mind (not to mention the passing of three years), it’s not surprising that Homosapien brings some changes for the band–they’re hardly unrecognizable, but there’s a palpable shift from an emphasis on Young Marble Giants/Marine Girls-esque minimal rhythmic guitar pop to a clearer embrace of a fuller, busier, and electric (but still quite catchy) experimental/art rock sound.

“Crystal Ball”, Homosapien’s introductory track, is a post-punk-pop mission statement, a song that begins with a simple, satisfying guitar riff–but rather than merely meditating on it, Nightshift add all kinds of sonic interjections across its three minutes, and even break out some cathartic guitar soloing in the song’s second half. Plenty of songs on Homosapien give off reminders of the old Nightshift–the hypnotic post-punk of “Sure Look”, the synth-led mid-tempo wanderings of “S.U.V.”, the psychedelic folk soundscape of “Cut”–but the quartet find electricity in them that helps them slot in nicely with Nightshift’s newer, louder sound (found in the deconstructed 60s garage rock of “Together We Roll” and the noise pop explosion of “Your Good Self”, among others). Some of the most energetic moments on Homosapien come towards its end–like “Y.T. Tutorial”, a weird but incredibly inspired piece of prog-pop that stitches together a few different sections of muddled, dangerous-sounding rock and roll, a soaring, Screaming Females-esque refrain, and a breezy, pastoral bridge, or the record’s closing anthem, “Crush”. Alexander gets a workout (relatively speaking) on the latter song–Nightshift are as “brisk” as they’ve ever been on the track, but just when it seems like the song is going to burst into something really wild, it descends into synths and accordions. The quartet pull together for one last big swing, however–before this LP, I wouldn’t have thought Nightshift to be the kind of band to end a record like that, but it makes perfect sense for Homosapien. (Bandcamp link)

Sylvia Sawyer James – Sylvia Sawyer James

Release date: July 26th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Bedroom folk, psychedelic folk, lo-fi
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Anonymous

Sylvia Sawyer James is a bedroom folk singer-songwriter who grew up in Portland, Oregon and is currently based out of Chicago, where she seems to have recorded and released the bulk of her solo material. She put out an album called SON in 2020 and an EP called Haiku the year afterwards, and songs that would eventually end up on her next album have been trickling out over the past couple of years. Self-titled and clocking in at 74 minutes in length, Sylvia Sawyer James is a massive introduction to an as-of-yet unknown talent, one that comes clearly into focus by the time its eighteen tracks have made their marks. James is a “Pacific Northwest folk singer” in the expansive, cavernous Phil Elverum tradition, recalling more recent acts like Ther, Leor Miller’s Fear of Her Own Desire, and Jordaan Mason at various points on her latest record. Although James does have an experimental/noise music background, Sylvia Sawyer James is actually on the starker end of the spectrum, largely built from acoustic guitars with occasional violin and banjo accompaniments.

Sylvia Sawyer James is at least partially about James’ gender transition, and digging through the tome of her lyrics turns up several excellent crystallizations of the subject (most explicitly in “Home (Eli)”, where she sings “I was a son / And now I’m your sister,” to her titular sibling, but lines like “Falling awake at the hospital / I fucked up my body’s a vehicle,” in “Anonymous” and “I lost my job because I couldn’t write my name,” in “Connectome” invite such readings as well). These moments are best experienced in the midst of sitting down and taking in Sylvia Sawyer James as a whole, I think–although there are certainly embellishments throughout the album, the foundation of it is “folk-y” enough that it almost feels like witnessing someone giving everything they’ve got (with a bit of help) in a single live performance. The first proper song on the record, “Barrier”, is less of an open ball of emotion than the song that follows it, “Prayers to a Turning Page”, but both are completely engrossing folk songs–and even when “Beads (A Bound)” steers the album into hushed tones, James hardly goes quietly. This is one of the records where my typical 400-odd word capsules aren’t equipped to fully capture everything that’s going on in it–more words than that could easily be devoted to delving into second-half highlight “The Psychlops Song”, or on the eight-minute, reverberating “Germs”–but it’s worth snagging a piece of it to present to you here, just as Sylvia Sawyer James feels like an excerpt from something even larger. Of course, it’s plenty substantial on its own. (Bandcamp link)

Goodbye Wudaokou – Mirror Skies

Release date: June 14th
Record label: YaoYiZhen
Genre: Indie pop, dream pop, new wave, college rock, post-punk
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Autumn Feelings

Manchester’s Mat Mills is a lifelong musician–he played in a post-rock band as a teenager, and continued writing and playing music as a solo artist after he moved to China in the 2000s. Despite all this, Mills’ musical activity never quite translated towards making records–making it so that, after an extended hiatus from music, Mirror Skies is actually his debut album. The first album from Goodbye Wudaokou was written, played, and recorded entirely by Mills from 2021 to 2024 at his home, and though he describes it as “very lofi”, it’s about as clean and polished as it could be. Once again living in Manchester with a partner and two children, the Mills of Mirror Skies is someone aware of the passing of time (perhaps developing a keener sense of it through the writing of this album), and these ten songs reflect this. This certainly goes for Mills’ lyrics (and even the cover of the record), but I’m also thinking of the sound of Mirror Skies–while plenty of “bedroom rock” albums opt for “streamlined” and “sparse”, Mills isn’t afraid of lengthy instrumental passages and relatively ornate arrangements as he pursues a stately guitar pop sound, one that incorporates new wave, post-punk, dream pop, and vintage 1980s indie pop.

Released via CD, Mirror Skies’ ten songs balloon to fifty minutes in length, with Mills trusting the listener to hang on while he expands each track to its fullest extent. Not that Goodbye Wudaokou ever pursue a “difficult listen”–both Mills’ even-keeled vocals and the bright instrumentals remain incredibly friendly, both in the record’s more languid moments (like the later-period New Order-y “oasis pop” of opening track “Never Let Me Go”) or the more upbeat ones (the post-punk-jangle-pop “New Century Regrets” and the ever-so-slightly-distorted “Icy Black”). Glancing at the songs’ titles, one can already start piecing together some of Mirror Skies’ overarching threads (“New Century Regrets”, “Beautiful Nostalgia”, “Wasted Years”), but this overview doesn’t exactly do justice to what Mills is doing on a micro level for each song, from the fearless embrace of electronic elements in “Dark Wave / In Your Arms” to the closing trio of songs, which all surprisingly embrace inventive minimalism in different ways. The lush synth/dream pop of “Autumn Feelings”, the hushed slowcore of “Sun into Sky”, and the plainspoken seven-minute final track “Wasted Years” ensure that Mirror Skies trails off in completely different territory than in which it began. I wouldn’t expect less from a debut record this long in the making. (Bandcamp link)

Manners Manners – I Held Their Eyes, I Kissed Them All

Release date: July 26th
Record label: 20/20
Genre: 90s indie rock, noise pop, post-punk
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Yr Well

Vocalist/guitarist J. Pinder, vocalist/drummer H.S. Sweet, and bassist Jes Welter debuted as Manners Manners back in 2016 with a three-song demo; their output since that point has included Guided by Voices and Squeeze covers, as well as 2018’s First in Line EP, recorded by J. Robbins in the trio’s hometown of Baltimore. Robbins is once again at the helm for I Held Their Eyes, I Kissed Them All, a seven-song LP that’s the group’s most substantial release yet. Although it’s a short debut album, I Held Their Eyes… is an ambitious one–for one, it sounds huge, and the band conjure up everything from post-punk to 90s-style indie rock to garage rock to indie pop to folk rock across the record. Self-described “queer adults of power pop”, Manners Manners assert themselves as both wide-eyed pop believers and indie rock veterans on I Held Their Eyes…, an album that sparkles and shines but rejects superficiality entirely, encouraging those listening to listen to and sift through everything below the gleaming surface.

After the loose-feeling, dreamy alt-country introduction of “Big Outdoor Party”, “Cinemattachine” finds Manners Manners announcing themselves loudly and aggressively with a sleek piece of post-Sleater-Kinney-punk-pop that also contains more than a bit of “I see why they feel a kinship with J. Robbins” energy, too. The more outwardly pop-bonafide-proving tracks are coming up soon afterwards–“Wallpaper” is a new take on an old classic (straightforward pop melodies colliding with big electric guitars), the breezy “Aperture” reaches back towards vintage guitar-based indie pop in both its instrumental and vocals, and “Straight Cost of Living” is bouncy and snappy from the wink of its title on down. On all of these songs, Pinder and Sweet are at the center of the recordings–both of them are expertly conversational frontpeople. The vocals on single “Yr Well” similarly stay on top of the backing music, but the roaring, dramatic indie rock of that song is the closest that Manners Manners come to crashing onshore–aided by three members of the band $100 Girlfriend on guitar, synthesizer, and vocals, the band thunders through an overwhelming instrumental that only grows and grows. Nonetheless, the chorus comes through clearly: “I have been to your well, and it only flows backwards, upside-down, and to itself”. With the gale force winds of the music behind it, the song’s central rebuke is made all the more strong by its intangibility and opacity. (Bandcamp link)

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