The Night Game - The Night Game

The Night Game
The Night Game
2018
Spotify

The Night Game instantly make you think 80s electropop. It's likely no coincidence that the singer kinda sounds like Sting, but not quite as piercing as the Police front man. The first three tracks feel like some kind of exploration of other bands, with "Once in a Lifetime" sounding like some kind of Walk the Moon cover. It's not just that their sound feels mainstream, it's that it feels like it is sampling mainstream. The package is too glossy and too refined, it looses almost all edge. I came across The Night Game because they are opening for one of my favorite bands, St. Lucia, soon. However this album suffers the same lack of punch that St. Lucia's most recent record did. All the edges have been rounded out, the ideas have become more pedestrian and generic in what feels like a hard push to the middle. One of my favorite singers Caroline Polachek features on "Do You Think About Us?" and the former Chairlift songstress is absolutely wasted. Caroline has a otherworldly range and can go on vocal runs that will cut right through to your heart, but here she sings lower notes during the verse and is sort of just along for the ride in the chorus. "The Photograph" has some of the most inane lyrics I have heard in awhile, at one points it just mentions that there were "papers on the counter" which comes across as one of the most who gives a shit lines on the album, even through there are a whole bunch of them.

Nothing about this record feels inspired or exciting. It feels like a record put together to cash in on a moment that passed a few years ago. "Sunset on the Beltway" is an instrumental interlude that feels like nothing more than padding for an already overwrought record. Now things truly fall apart on the atrocious, let me re-iterate that, atrocious "American Nights". Let me write out just a few of these lyrics: "He was 18 and wasted/Bedroom in the basement, Parents house Tucson, Arizona/ What do you expect from a high school diploma? Working hours in the shoe store/ Selling dimes out the backdoor And he puts on his prom crown, says to his mama "I'm the king of this town" Won't you take me out? I hear the midnight streets are calling/ You can hold me down But like a bird I'm just free falling" They are trying to write some kind of Jimmy Eat World-ish coming of age story, but good god does it fall flatter than hell. The lyrics are so fucking corny and the music sounds like it belongs on some soft rock record from the late 80s. I'm writing this before I see the band live so maybe they will blow me away in a couple of days, but I can't see how with songs like this. Sigh, it's gonna be a long Night.

2.5 out of 10