by Noah Wade
Photos By Zach Pigg
"Even if the music has always been, ‘us,’ I think this album is about finding ourselves – and whatever is important to us – again.”
There are well over a dozen remnants of interviews, concert reviews, and coverage of singles, albums, and live streams with my name on them in relation to Nashville-based alt-pop trio Nightly floating around the internet. I’m a fan (not quite an OG but close), excitedly awaiting new releases and desperately clinging onto the indescribable and familiar feeling losing myself to songs like “No Vacancy,” “Dirty White Chucks,” “hate my favorite band,” and “Radiohead” performed live and in the flesh, while simultaneously doing my best to provide thoughtful and impartial analyses of their career and music in my professional ventures.
Nightly is made up of Jonathan Capeci (vocals), Joey Beretta (guitar), and Nicholas Sainato (drums). They have grown exponentially since bursting onto the scene in 2016, and are now seen as a blueprint of the contemporary indie/alternative pop genre as well as leaders of its stacked Nashville scene by both artists and fans alike.
Decisive moments throughout their career thus far have allowed them to develop the discipline to help cultivate and prime acts like Knox (“Not The 1975”) and The Wldlfe (“Somebody’s Gonna Love You”) for primetime success, while concurrently achieving it themselves.
They are set to headline venues such as NYC’s Webster Hall (where both Knox and The Wldlfe will headline one night prior) and LA’s The Fonda Theatre on their current run of shows, with support from a plethora of rising acts such as Jonah Marais (“Slow Motion”) and Will Linley (“Just Because I Called You”).
We jump on a midday Zoom two days prior to the release of their latest album songs to drive to, and engage in 5-7 minutes of catch-up (par for the course). “Have you always been from LONG Island?,” asks Sainato while chowing down on a quesadilla, raising an eyebrow and overenunciating ‘Long.’ “I thought you were from, like, D.C.”
At the time of writing, I have seen Nightly live on 10 occasions, in six cities across four states, the furthest being Detroit, MI. Each a multi-hour trek from central Long Island, NY. They are not the first, nor will they be the last, to be dismayed by the location of my home base, but for this band, and for the love of live music, I’ll always show up.
songs to drive to, ever-so-slightly less sonically adventurous than their 2020 debut self-titled record, is a record that is hyperaware of its musical identity without sacrificing its integrity. Its predecessor, 2023’s wear your heart out, came stacked with disco-infused pop bangers (“wear your heart out,” “like I do”) and more than a handful of tunes fit for algorithm-based indie playlists (“navy blue,” “it’s not your body,” “dry eyes”), but was quite self-referential. This latest effort is meant to be consumed amid formative sun kissed and serotonin-led snapshots of life, capturing these ephemeral moments in song form.
“We’ve had the ideas of songs to drive to for a while,” says Capeci. “We made a playlist called ‘songs to drive to’ many years ago, and had it in our bio. In a lot of ways, we as a band feel like we have come back to what we love. That last album, conceptually, was this other thing. Even if the music has always been, ‘us,’ I think this album is about finding ourselves – and whatever is important to us – again.”
“I think we had the title after all of the songs were created,” Sainato added. “We had a ton of songs that we’d written but hadn’t used, and it just didn’t feel right. Then we got into the groove of creating what we wanted to create. After that was finished, songs to drive to felt like the culmination of what we had made.”
Capeci referenced songs by Jeremy Zucker, ARIZONA, HAIM, MUNA, and Colouring, among others, as selections from that initial playlist. “I think, in some way, songs to drive to has always existed in this band, and has been a way we described it,” he continued. “It just felt like this was the time to sum that up.”
This is reflected across the record on tracks like “every part,” “TALK,” “time flies when you’re having fun,” the superb encore-worthy latter half of “gas station cowboy hats,” and “I didn’t know that I needed you.” The last of which, in a musical sense, mirrors “I got so much to tell you” – the stellar vocoder-assisted closer from their first record. This new track though is, emotionally, substantially gratified.
No song on the record represents the sound and concept of songs to drive to more proficiently than “where do we go from here,” one of its focus singles released this past October. A sense of immediacy, by way of a pulsating forward motion, dominates this tune from the jump with the emergence of a shimmering ‘80s-inspired synth riff. In contrast to the luminosity of the instrumental, Capeci strategically hovers in his lower baritenor register for the entirety of the tune, refraining from the typical opt-ups or added vocal flavor expected of modern male pop singers.
Capeci stepped out on his own last year, in between Nightly release cycles, releasing his album THE WAVE and an unaffiliated string of singles under the moniker jonny boy. A collection of suave, atmospheric pop tunes with hints of a neo-soul element in its instrumentation and vocal arrangements, the material was certainly within the Nightly canon, though individualistic enough to operate separately.
Lead single “angel face” is a standout, allowing its resonant, syncopated bass line and smooth jazz-influenced drum pattern to guide Capeci’s intentionally sluggish and sensual vocal on the low ends of the verse in contrast to his crystalline, floaty falsetto on the chorus.
“The guys have always encouraged it,” he says. “If anything, I think it just made what we wanted to do even stronger, vision wise. To get that music out of my system. I think every song that you write can make you a better songwriter or artist, because it can lead you closer to where you want to go, or further from where you don’t want to go.”
Additional selections from songs to drive to are equipped with a kindred sonic flair to that of “where do we go from here.” This includes “don’t even think about it,” infused with slight trop-house elements reminiscent of The 1975’s “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME,” and containing the sort of minimalist, understated intricacies found throughout album tracks on their first record, as well as “STOP,” which sees the band successfully aim for a more soulful approach with an added choir element meant to expand their musical parameters. The choir is composed of a plethora of vocal stacks sung by all three members.
The trio made the attempt to create freely without overcomplication. “For this record specifically, almost every song was figured out within one or one-and-a-half sessions,” says Beretta. “There wasn’t a lot of back-and-forth. Most were done day-of. A great idea that Jon came up with, that we loved, and we just produced out and tightened up. On our session folder, there are like, 90 songs that we’ve written over the last year-and-a-half, and these are the 11 that we love the most.”
Alongside “where do we go from here,” the funk-infused “me and my misses” is perhaps THE quintessential ‘driving song’ on the record. The tune, tailored with the looseness of “my boys” (a song highlighting brotherly camaraderie off wear your heart out) is a more than satisfactory attempt at a Short n’ Sweet-like wink. “That song was supposed to be a little cheeky… a little bit silly,” says Capeci. “There are a lot of songs like that on the Sabrina album that are funny, smart, catchy…”
“I think me and Joey forced Jon to put that on there,” Sainato interjects with a smile. “We were having too much fun making it.”
“100%,” Beretta adds.
“I was just unsure because I hadn’t really written anything like that before,” continued Capeci. “It’s nice to not take yourself too seriously, and that is THAT song on the album.”
When asked if or how the musical intentionally of “me and my misses,” and other slight shifts in sound across the project, affected his individual performance, Beretta was quick to credit Sainato for crafting that particular guitar section, but was forthcoming regarding his complete experience.
“A lot of the way I looked at guitar, and production in general, on this record was wanting to be very specific,” he says. “All of these songs feel really full, but they’re not dense. There aren’t many parts. We spent more time finding better parts instead of just throwing a bunch of stuff in the song so that it sounds big.”
He elaborated in a technical fashion. “Guitar wise, there is a lot of direct-in guitars with no amp on them,” he continued. “Just with chords and a little bit of overdrive on them, which we hadn’t really done before. A lot of the songs are more organic. We used the piano we have in the studio to make loops. We used THIS thing,” he said, momentarily stepping off-camera to acquire and display one of his musical trinkets. “It’s like a mini hammer dulcimer. We’d record independent notes and make loops out of that. We were just having fun, more than ever before, making this one.”
songs to drive to is yet another notch on the belt of a band known for expertly translating metaphysical feelings and emotions to songs, doing so in a way that is conversational, relatable, and serviceable.
“I wish there was some magical thing, but it’s really just doing it,” says Capeci, when asked how they have come to do so. “The more you do it, hopefully, the better you get at it. Or, at least, the more creative you have to be with talking about what’s going on in your life, and the better you get at being vulnerable. Being comfortable with being vulnerable enough to talk about the things you want to talk about. That comes with time and maturity, and finding creative ways to talk about where you’re at. Hopefully that honesty and vulnerability is what people connect to. We have to make it for ourselves before we make it for other people, so that’s maybe why that has come across a little bit better on this album than others.”
songs to drive to is out everywhere now. You can follow Nightly on Instagram here.
