Nation of Language

Praise for Nation Of Language:

“A crystalline return” - CLASH

“The synth-pop band combine mannered singing, retro-styling and high seriousness to highly impressive effect”  - Financial Times ★★★★

"They've delivered a true modern-day classic of the synth-pop genre." - NME ★★★★★

“the best synth-pop band in the world” - PASTE

“It offers a subtle reminder that these art-school Brooklynites might have equally fond memories of 2000s indie-dance artists like Cut Copy, Bloc Party, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as their ’80s luminaries.” - Pitchfork

Today, Nation of Language share new single ‘Too Much, Enough’ - the centrepiece of new album Strange Disciple out 15th September via [PIAS], named as one of the most anticipated albums of the summer by Pitchfork.

In this new track, the band takes aim at the angering, addictive and anxiety-inducing TV news cycles that have so many viewers hopelessly devoted. ‘Too Much, Enough’ looks outward with an effect that is both immediate and irresistible. The chorus explodes like the revelation of a third eye opening, combining a ricocheting pattern of synths with an uninhibited bassline, leaping vocal melodies and an empathic call-and-response. 

Simultaneously surreal and hyper present, ‘Too Much, Enough’ arrives with a music video starring Emmy-nominated actor Jimmi Simpson (Westworld, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia), fellow musicians Reggie Watts, Kevin Morby, Tomberlin, Moldy Peaches’ Adam Green, and LVL UP’s Greg Rutkin, plus more than a dozen other close friends, familiar faces and even the hooded Strange Disciple itself. Directed by Robert Kolodny, the video satirises the outrageous TV broadcasts that inspired the song, turning the hysteria and fear-mongering into a hilarious embrace of absurdity.

"Too Much, Enough’ is a song born out of an exhaustion with the 24 hour news cycle and the outrage bait it uses to get everyone permanently wound up. It seems the only way to find an edge in the media business is to appeal to our most base instincts of disgust (see: the high ratings of Fox News, etc.), and we end up suffering both individually and collectively for it. 

When it came to creating a visual to go alongside the song, we didn’t want the music video to be its own form of outrage bait so we went with a more absurdist approach, gathering some friends of ours, and of our incredible director Robert Kolodny, to make something fun and outlandish to that effect. We also laced the video with as many NOL-related Easter eggs and iconography as possible to give anyone watching an opportunity to play along at home and be a part of that absurdity. It felt good to try to name a problem for ourselves without leaning on fear and rage.

It’s a powerful thing to deny someone the ability to manipulate your most destructive emotions, and that’s something we want to celebrate here.

The overarching theme of Strange Disciple is infatuation and how one's reality can be warped by it. We went a more romantic route with that on the previous video, but News is one of those less interpersonal activities it feels like everyone takes part in, so we wanted to show our disciple is just as susceptible to it as any other figure."

Following previous singles ‘Sole Obsession’, ‘Weak In Your Light’ (hailed among the “best songs of 2023 so far” - LA Times), and the frenetic ‘Stumbling Still’, ‘Too Much, Enough’ further embodies Strange Disciple’s overarching focus on unhealthy infatuations, obsessions and the bigger idea that feeling something is better than nothing, even if the source is damaging. 

Produced by Nick Millhiser (Holy Ghost!, LCD Soundsystem), Strange Disciple is also the third album in a triptych that has unfolded over the past three years. As the band has evolved, the common denominator has been a restless urge to embrace progress, exploration and forward motion, and singer Ian Devaney imagines the sound of Nation of Language’s three LPs as different ways of moving through and experiencing through the world. Whereas 2020’s pandemic-era debut, Introduction, Presence, took place in a car, with a blurry euphoria reminiscent of road trips, and 2021's A Way Forward occurred on and as a locomotive, inspired by the minimal chug of krautrock, Strange Disciple is the band’s wayfarer record. Informed by wondrous walks through New York and different cities they thought they'd never visit on tour, it sees the band expand their sound with newfound and visceral fervour. 

After a triumphant series of shows at Brooklyn Steel, The Fonda Theatre and a sold-out audience of 1400 at London’s KOKO, plus standout appearances at Pitchfork Festival and Primavera - where they drew the largest crowd of any artist that played their stage in Barcelona - Nation of Language’s Strange Disciple tour is still just beginning. On top of nearly 50 dates coming up this year, including an upgraded venue in Berlin and their biggest London audience at HEAVEN,  the band has announced three more US shows for October, including Chicago’s Metro, San Francisco’s The Independent and LA’s The Roxy. Find the full list below, and tickets at nationoflanguage.com/events.

Strange Disciple out 15th September via [PIAS]

About Nation Of Language:

Three years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, Nation of Language have attracted a rapidly growing, international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave and post-punk traditions. Their hopeful music—marked by soaring melodies, blinking synth lines, and frontman Ian Devaney’s towering voice—is a ray of light in an era of anxiety, cynicism, hatred, and snark. A fervent sound has continued to evolve across two subsequent albums, but the common denominator is an unmistakable quality of movement: the pulse from their keyboards is heady and propulsive, and their lyrics teem with the restlessness and romanticism intrinsic to life in concrete jungles. The trio’s bustling Brooklyn home has continued to serve as a backdrop to their creativity, the end product permeating with an urgency to embrace progress, exploration, and forward motion. 

Those who have seen Nation of Language perform have witnessed Ian Devaney, Aidan Noell, and Alex MacKay bounce around the stage with seemingly endless energy as they dot the globe. These days, they’re packing venues with increasing frequency throughout the year, and becoming mainstays of massive summer music events such as Governors Ball, Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound and Outside Lands. Following the critical acclaim of both their 2020 debut album Introduction, Presence and its 2021 follow-up A Way Forward, the band have made their late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last year, and now head into their next chapter. 

Nation of Language’s forthcoming third album Strange Disciple fits neatly into this theory of motion. Devaney has come to view this first trio of LPs as a sort of triptych, with each album relating to differing modes of transportation. He imagines the first (Introduction, Presence) takes place in a car, with a blurry euphoria reminiscent of road trips and song titles like “Automobile” and “The Motorist.” The follow up (A Way Forward) occurs on (and as) a locomotive, influenced by the minimal chug of krautrock. So it’s only fitting that their latest full-length Strange Disciple is their wayfarer album, best experienced with one’s own two-feet on the ground and informed by walks through various cities while on tour or within their home base of New York City.

Also new to their creative process, live shows have begun to play an important role in the formation of this new set of songs, as the band was able to see the drastic range of audience reaction to their music firsthand from their first waves of on-again/off-again pandemic era touring. ““Suddenly in 2021 to our surprise the rooms were full of people,” Devaney says “and roughly half of those showing up wanted to dance while the other half wanted to cry. It’s a bit of a tightrope act to satisfy both feelings at once, but the most beautiful thing in the world to us is that all parties made the perfect amount of space for one another to be able to do whichever felt right to them. To be able to keep the live environment palatable to both groups has become the goal moving forward". As they prepare to play for as many people as possible in the year ahead, their swift rise is still something they’re getting used to. As Devaney elaborates, “Other than on a hyper-local level, for a number of years we were such an unknown band that being unknown naturally became our default mental setting. This time around, I’m told repeatedly that there’s people waiting to both hear and see the new music... and yet I still can’t quite grasp the concept that either one is true. I see the dates on the calendar and at times it feels like it must be somebody else’s band”.

Strange Disciple was recorded in the East Williamsburg studio of producer Nick Millhiser (live member of LCD Soundsystem and also one half of Holy Ghost!), with a commitment to keeping the process as rooted in analog gear as possible and printing the tracks to tape. Leaning into a world of limits and surprises—much like a live show—the process allowed the band to accept imperfections and resist the inclination to overthink their songcraft. 

The sonic direction of Strange Disciple was guided by the album’s lead single ‘Sole Obsession’, as well as ‘Spare Me the Decision’ and ‘Sightseer’, all loosely groove-driven songs that deviate from the straightforward drive of A Way Forward. “The bass parts have more of a groove and a bounce that signalled being on your feet and out on the street,” Devaney says. As their bass lines became more playful and ambulatory, they also relied more on the electric guitar, which had largely been a background element up until this point. Channelling their love of shoegaze, the unhurried, distorted “Swimming in the Shallow Sea” is their most guitar-centric track yet, ‘Surely I Can’t Wait’ blossoms out of a crafty, circling guitar groove, and ‘Stumbling Still’ sneaks in some wah-wah guitar and live drums amidst its kraut-punk clamour. But perhaps the most glaring strums on Strange Disciple come from the zany bass line of ‘Too Much Enough’, which seductively contorts with a fun-loving wink during the song’s unforgettable chorus. 

‘Too Much Enough’ planted another important seed in the album process—the song is about watching the news on TV and the feeling of “taking in so much media that your brain goes into constant outrage mode,” as Devaney explains. This song, along with ‘Sole Obsession’—a track about an overzealous devotee from which the album gets its title—embody this record’s focus on unhealthy infatuations and obsessions, or as Devaney puts it, “revelatory anguish”. Strange Disciple’s album cover is a Christian Little painting of an absurd monk-like figure who’s in agony and ecstasy over their dedication to something. In an age of stan culture and political demagogues, not only is this theme a timely one, it also taps into something bigger—the idea that feeling something is better than nothing, even if the source is damaging. “Sometimes when I feel the most is when I feel hopelessly devoted to something or someone,” Devaney explains.

Most of Strange Disciple’s toxic infatuation manifests in relation to romance. Devaney drew inspiration from Leonard Cohen’s ability to imbue love songs with dark twists of the knife, resulting in these melodramatic—almost operatic—tales, which Devaney describes as a “quasi-fictional amalgam”. ‘Weak In Your Light’ opens the album with their most forthright and pure admission of adoration to date, and as the LP progresses, the narrator fluctuates between obsession and shame. But by the album’s closer ‘I Will Never Learn’, that narrator is fully broken, having reached their wits’ end but still unable to free themselves, restarting the addictive cycle from the top. 

Strange Disciple is a spiritual, searching record, as we follow a bumpy journey of self-exploration, stumbling on moments of clarity and wisdom and then getting tripped up again. Ultimately, it suggests that we shouldn't shy away from the brief pain necessary to make much-needed change in our lives, especially when it grants reprieve from longtime pain that we’ve grown comfortable with. However, it doesn’t paint these ideas in matter-of-fact terms, instead leaning on artful, transient vignettes of characters caught in the crosshairs of temptation, guilt, and reverie, as their obsessions both fuel and eat away at them.

Strange Disciple is an invitation to both celebrate and mourn, find yourself and lose yourself, reflect on one’s infatuations and perhaps even form new ones with these songs—as long as you’re feeling and as long as you’re on the move, whether that’s physically, emotionally, or mentally. After all, three albums deep, Nation of Language still have new horizons to explore, and several cars, trains, and planes to catch.