The new album from Night Moves, Can You Really Find Me, drops on Domino on Friday. It is the sort of release that may get overlooked in late June, as folks are going away for summer vacations. And that's sad because it's a fine record, and one which rewards attentive listeners, and one which would make a perfect soundtrack to a summer trip by car, late at night. And I say all that hoping that the band didn't name themselves after the Bob Seger song, as it's one of my least favorite pieces of music in this world.
Can You Really Find Me kicks off with the supple "Mexico" and the sleek "Recollections", a number that recalls the sort of indie-based soft-rock one found being released in the Eighties from The Big Dish, Danny Wilson, and China Crisis. The elegant "Strands Align" is even better, a number that owes debts to both Donald Fagen and Paddy McAloon, while "Waiting for the Symphony" takes things even further back, shades of Andrew Gold and Seventies AM Gold-stuff here. Elsewhere, "Ribboned Skies" serves up dashes of Sakamoto and solo John Lennon, with a hint of Lindsey Buckingham, in the service of one of the real highlights here on Can You Really Find Me, while "Coconut Grove" is, despite its hokey title, a distant cousin of the kind of songs the previously-mentioned Paddy McAloon brought out with Prefab Sprout in the Nineties. Lots of this record is sleek, with the pop surfaces here very shiny ones. Still, despite the obvious debts owed by John Pelant and Micky Alfano to the musicians of Los Angeles from earlier generations, for example, the duo manage to make this all seem fresh.
Can You Really Find Me is out on Friday via Domino.
More details on Night Moves via the band's official Facebook page, or their official website.
[Photo: Elise Tyler]