#homosapien

[quietgayguy]

*flies into the night* 🏳️‍🌈

[dustedmagazine]

Nightshift — Homosapien (Trouble in Mind)

Photo by Brian Carroll

“Together We Roll,” from Nightshifts second full-length ambles into view like a slacker’s call to arms, its guitar cadence rhythmically insistent but lackadaisical, its rallying chorus emphatic but also sliding off into anomie. The beat swaggers, swaying from wide to side. The words advocate for action in a sing-song metronomic cadence, bassist Rob Doig urging, “Stand up tall/together we roll/elevated language and prose.” And yet, like the other songs, it has a sleepy not quite real air. It’s a battle cry that’s on the verge of a nap and a crisper, more rock-band-ish iteration of Nightshift’s dreamy, surreal punk.

Nightshift’s last album, Zöe came out in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, the product of lockdown and remote collaboration. It was driftier and less angular than the previous cassette debut; in my review I wrote, “Where before you might have thought about Shopping or the Fire Engines first, now, with Zöe, you grasp for reference points like High Places, White Magic and Good Fuck. It is hardly a punk album at all on some levels, and yet it also is, just gauzier and more inferential.”  Since then the band’s drummer, Chris White, has switched to guitar and Rob Alexander of Tarantula and Radio Banter has slipped behind the kit. Eothen Stearn — a big part of the band’s soft-focus dreaminess — continues to sing and play keys and some percussion, with Doig is again on bass and occasional vocals.  

The big change, though, is that they’re all in the room recording together. The sound is far more immediate and electric than before. The double-timed one-two surge of “Crush,” for instance, has a tactile prickliness, a top-speed everybody-hold-on giddiness like a rollercoaster going around a sharp curve. “Come and sit beside me, metabolize me,” cajoles Stearn, in a rich fluttery tone with some sex in it, and it’s far more visceral than anything on Zöe. Likewise “Your Good Self” yelps and roars and pummels, a furious drum solo breaking out amid blasts of errant trombone mid-cut, Stearn coming in to close with a “ba-da-ba-da-bop,” syncopated bleat of vocal sound, like ESG in the 1980s.

There is also a fair amount of slow, psychedelic swirl in the post-apocalyptic “Mellow Baby,” and in equally enveloping “Cut.” Yet even these tracks seem more present, more fleshy, more in-your-face than the music from the last album. “SUV,” the disc’s gentle pop song about multiple lovers, follows a loose, twanging groove of guitars and tootling keyboards. Yet even as relaxed and in-the-pocket as it is, there’s an unmistakable life and collaborative energy to it. COVID forced all kinds of compromises, and lots of bands, including Nightshift, made excellent music despite them. But there’s really nothing like a band all in the same room and making noise, is there?  

Jennifer Kelly

[mooseyspooky]

Hi I can no longer be friends with people who don't enjoy this gay sex anthem

[senorboombastic]

a/s/l: Nightshift

Remember the days of the old schoolyard? Remember when Myspace was a thing? Remember those time-wasting, laborious quizzes that everyone used to love so much? Birthday Cake For Breakfast is bringing them back!  Every couple of weeks, an unsuspecting band will be subject to the same old questions about dead bodies, Hitler, crying and crushes.   This Week: Ahead of releasing their new…

[dailyalbumrecs]

Homosapien - Pete Shelley

This is a dancy new wavy album that is somewhat of a departure from the kind of droney weird synth album of his first album, and punk music with the Buzzcocks. I really like this album, and it features a neat computer on the album art, a Commodore PET. My favorite track is Homosapien.

Apple Music:

Spotify:

[total-derangement-of-the-senses]

Song of the Day

17 Jan., ‘24

[wintereddd]

Homosapien NOT hetersapien. WE ARE ALL GUY

[snapple-kun]

Homo sapiens

Homo= gay

All humans are gay

[theabrahmi]

From HUMAN INTELLIGENCE to ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

[toontuska]

[matsurik90]

Fire 7

Page 17

[crowned-clown-rising]

Can I just say...

THAT'S KIRK.

3x24: Turnabout intruder

great addition:

[sillybillylulu]

is class of 09 still popular 🤨

[schoolsoutmp3]

It's happened to Becky Albertalli, who wrote a book about how terrible it is to be outed.

It's happened to Keiynan Lonsdale, who starred in the adaptation of that book.

It's happened to Kit Connor, who starred in a show that makes it clear you don't owe people your sexuality.

This list will only ever get longer, because you are weaponising the concepts of authenticity and "own-voices" to creep into strangers lives to find out some of the most personal things you could find.

"Queer actors for queer roles" is a right idea until all you can focus on is harassing anyone who's not stated they're gay. Forcing them to tell their parents, their whole extended family, their neighbours, their old pre-school classmates, and thousands of people who will never ever even see them in person let alone interact with them.