The Predatory Wasp

I’m off to Bristol to see Nation of Language tonight, and I haven’t been looking forward to a gig this much in quite a while.

They’ve become one of my favourite bands over the last few years, and I’ve had Ian Devaney on the One Track Mind series for this blog along the way. With four albums now to their name, I went looking to see how other people had ranked them, couldn’t really find anything, and so decided I might as well do it myself!

Nation of Language themselves came together in Brooklyn around Ian Devaney, Aidan Noell and, eventually, bassist Alex MacKay, although the project stretches back to Devaney experimenting with synths after years playing in guitar bands, apparently sparked in part by rediscovering OMD’s Electricity, a song his dad used to play in the car when he was growing up. Their debut didn’t arrive until 2020, by which point they’d spent years gradually putting the record together around day jobs, and since then they’ve grown from a relatively small Brooklyn synth-pop band into something much bigger, while still retaining that slightly homespun quality that made those early songs so appealing.

This is, obviously, entirely subjective, and given how much I love at least three of these records, probably liable to change.

#4 – Dance Called Memory

Perhaps it’s still too early to properly judge Dance Called Memory, which has only been around for a year, but so far it’s comfortably the Nation of Language album I’ve connected with least.

It starts strongly with the emotional scene-setting of Can’t Face Another One, but after that I find myself drifting through a few too many songs and melodies that don’t quite stick, before it really hits its stride again with Under the Water and In Your Head, both wonderfully poignant, lush pieces of music that remind me why I love this band so much in the first place.

Interestingly, Devaney wrote much of the album by sitting around playing guitar when he was feeling low, while he and returning producer Nick Millhiser also deliberately tried to introduce unfamiliar instruments and processes into the studio, including the Moog DFAM percussion synth. There’s a looseness to the result that I can appreciate, even if I’m not sure it always works for me.

It’s certainly not a bad album, and I may end up eating these words, but right now it’s perhaps the only Nation of Language record I wouldn’t call essential.

#3 – Strange Disciple

Strange Disciple was a real slow burner for me, and when it first came out I didn’t connect with it anything like as much as I had with the first two albums, although over time it has gradually worked its way in.

Weak In Your Light and Sole Obsession are both distinctive openers, Stumbling Still is another favourite, and I like that there’s a slightly rougher quality to the record, something that perhaps makes sense given the way it was made with Nick Millhiser, using analogue synths, printing tracks to tape and deliberately resisting the temptation to endlessly perfect every detail.

For me though, it’s an album defined by one song, because A New Goodbye might just be the best thing they’ve ever made, and is certainly the Nation of Language song I feel most deeply.

It’s the build that gets me, beginning so innocuously and then gradually gathering weight until those jittering, arpeggiated backing vocals appear in the final quarter and, pretty much without fail, I’m a puddle.

#2 – A Way Forward

It’s a very close-run thing between the top two, but their second album comes in at number two.

There’s just so much here that I love: the kinetic bass and soaring vocals of Across That Fine Line, the lovesick melodrama of Wounds of Love, the celestial atmosphere of The Grey Commute, and then the heartbreaking grandeur of A Word & A Wave.

It also feels like the point where Nation of Language started looking a little further beyond the early-’80s synth-pop that had informed the debut, with Devaney deliberately digging backwards into Kraftwerk, krautrock and earlier electronic music, including Laurie Spiegel, while production was split between debut producer Abe Seiferth and Nick Millhiser.

I think it’s a stunning record and, depending on when you ask me, very nearly their best, but unfortunately they started so strongly that there can really only be one at number one.

#1 – Introduction, Presence

I’m not sure there has ever been a more appropriately titled debut album, because Introduction, Presence really did feel like that for me, the visceral thrill of suddenly finding a band that seemed to contain so many of the things I already loved about music, but somehow put them together in a way that felt completely their own.

There’s a nice story behind it too, with Devaney and Aidan Noell essentially making the album whenever they could afford another studio session, working café, restaurant and nannying jobs in between, and eventually asking people to contribute towards finishing it instead of buying them wedding presents.

But mostly it’s the songs. Tournament is such a perfect opener, while September Again remains one of their most emotionally affecting pieces of storytelling, with Devaney’s vocal becoming increasingly desperate as it unfolds.

Then there’s Friend Machine, which for me remains the high-water mark of their stripped-down, ’80s-evoking production, before the crowning glory of The Motorist, which seems to stretch out forever and somehow still never feels long enough.

I can’t think of many debut albums that have had quite the same impact on me. Nostalgia, electronics, yearning, melancholy, big melodies and that strange sensation of music making you feel as though you’re remembering something you haven’t actually experienced.

If Nation of Language are new to you, this is where I’d start.