Nightlands

Nightlands serves as the creative vehicle for multi-instrumentalist David Hartley, whose work sits at the intersection of dreamy psych-pop, soft rock, and prog rock and carries an experimental bent shaped by his childhood as the son of a genetic engineer. A signature feature of the project’s sonic identity comes from treated vocals that occasionally let the singer inhabit the wistful character known as the “silver man.” Hartley also plays bass in the War on Drugs; he had already spent roughly five years with that group when Nightlands issued its debut, Forget the Mantra, on Secretly Canadian in 2010. Bandmates from the War on Drugs later appeared as guests on the follow-up LPs Oak Island (2013) and Moonshine (2022), the latter marking Nightlands’ fourth album.

While living in Philadelphia, Hartley began devoting serious attention to his solo project during an extended period when the War on Drugs were finishing Slave Ambient. Forget the Mantra reached Secretly Canadian in late 2010, and although commitments to the War on Drugs—who released Slave Ambient on the same label in mid-2011—dominated much of the next year, he still found time to put out the EPs All the Way and Covers, the second of which contained a dreamy, atmospheric reading of Lindsey Buckingham’s “Trouble.” In January 2013 he returned with Oak Island, his second Nightlands full-length and a collection steeped in emotional nostalgia; among the contributors were Heather Woods Broderick, harpist Mary Lattimore, Nick Krill of Teen Men, and War on Drugs members Adam Granduciel on guitar and Robbie Bennett on Arp Omni, Juno, and keyboards.

The War on Drugs achieved widespread critical and commercial success with 2014’s Lost in the Dream and moved to Atlantic Records, yet Hartley kept Nightlands active, delivering the project’s third album, the spacious set of love songs titled I Can Feel the Night Around Me, on Western Vinyl in May 2017. He tracked most of the record by himself inside a basement rehearsal and storage room the band had previously used. After becoming a father and moving to Asheville, North Carolina, he prepared Nightlands’ next album, Moonshine, which arrived in July 2022 and drew on remote contributions from four of his War on Drugs colleagues, Frank LoCrasto (known for work with Cass McCombs and Fruit Bats), and producer Adam McDaniel (whose credits include Angel Olsen and Hurray for the Riff Raff).