4 out of 5

Label: Polyvinyl

Produced by: Lewis Pesacov

I faced some moments of doubt when coming in to Nightstand, Tancred’s followup to the Anna Waronker-produced Out of the Garden: having gleaned on to that album mainly because of Anna, and thus supremely pleased by its many That Dogisms, I was already on guard for how Jess Abbott’s project would shape up under different hands. So when opener Song One called back to Abbott’s former, electro-pop group, Talk Talk, I got that first doubtful pang.

…Cleared up shortly thereafter by the rocking singalong single Queen of New York, which was as bright and catchy as anything on Garden.

…Then triggered again by many of the followup tunes, which were good, but both a bit more broad and less direct; a “maturing” away from 90s grunge.

I sat with mixed feelings as I continued the journey, then tuned in to the lyrics, which were surprisingly bleak. Jess already brought some good imagery to Garden, but  it generally felt in service of typical relationship woes. Here, the focus isn’t, at a top down level, dissimilar, but Abbott’s view is a longer one, and often wandering down darker paths of questioning herself; combined with her evocative phrasings and clever twisting of repeated phrases, the singalongs take on much different context, a context which solved the album for me.

Interestingly, with a more patient ear, these “broad” songs became deeper affairs, with some great production work mingling in strings and keys to nuanced compositions which blend pop and rock to distract from the album’s moodiness. In this sense, the singles become sort of the weaker tunes: totally accessible and catchy, but more ephemeral for the same reason. What sticks is the remainder of the disc: the deep emotions found in the performance, and the surprising layers vetted out when you go through it more.

Nightstand is a more mature followup, but while I often find myself saying that decisively – maturing away from my preference – here, Abbott took the hooks I loved from Garden and gave them even more weight.