Snapshot of a Beginner

Description

Nap Eyes latest full length, Snapshot Of A Beginner, is proof that sometimes the late bloomers bloom brightest. Eight years and four albums into it, the artistic arc of Nap Eyes finds itself tracing a line alongside frontman Nigel Chapmans daily tai chi practice. Those first years and albums are the cold mornings in the park: the measured movements, the joint aches, the self-doubt. With each new release, an incremental and invigorating step forward. And with the end of each album and tour, a return to the beginners practice. And now, Snapshot Of A Beginner Nap Eyes boldest, most concentrated and most hi-fi album to date a study of that repeated return and all that it can teach you. Almost all the songs of Nap Eyes are whittled into their final form from Chapmans unspooling, 20-minute voice-and-guitar free-writing sessions. Each member drummer Seamus Dalton, bassist Josh Salter or guitarist Brad Loughead then plays a crucial role in song development, composing around the idiosyncratic structures and directing the overall sound and feel of the songs. Until now, that final song construction and recording has been mostly done live in a room. But for Snapshot Of A Beginner the band went to The Nationals neuvo-legendary upstate NY Long Pond Studio, working with producers Jonathan Low (Big Red Machine, The National) and James Elkington (Steve Gunn, Joan Shelley), the latter of whom also did pre-production arrangement work with the band. It took Nap Eyes a long time and a long practice to reach this artistic zen but one gets the feeling throughout Snapshot Of A Beginner that this balance is going to hold. Previous album Im Bad Now was described by Uncut as as much a modest masterpiece as Spring Hill Fair [by The Go-Betweens] or Tigermilk [by Belle and Sebastian].