‘Soulpunk’ is one of those concatenated genre tags that either excites or confounds people. Odd, then, that it has practitioners stretching back to at least the 1980s, when bands like Bad Brains were cross-hatching hardcore and metal with reggae and funk to highly enjoyable results. Other bands that followed like Living Colour and The Dirtbombs went further in fusing soaring, soulful vocals and melodies with dirty, fuzzed-out guitars and propulsive rhythms (the less said about Green Day‘s half-assed attempt to mix their signature pop-punk sound with glam and Motown on 2020’s disastrous Father of All Motherfuckers the better). Algiers, one of this author’s favorite modern bands, take from not only soul and punk but also industrial and gospel stylings to create a truly unique musical brew. Lying somewhere within the poppier, groovier end of this surprisingly extensive subgenre are Baltimore’s self-proclaimed soulpunk group nightlife.
Great soul music has the power to uplift the listener, filling them with a comforting combination of passion and determination. Great punk music can provide the same qualities but with some key differences: distortion, speed, and usually unrefined vocals. nightlife, despite calling themselves soulpunk, generally don’t utilize punk’s fast tempos or raw singing, choosing instead to keep things mostly at a funking midtempo pace. Their debut EP, 2021’s new low, opens with a title track that encapsulates what would otherwise be a standard sound for this style: a slap bass line, catchy hooks from vocalist Hansel Romero, and switching off between live and sampled drums. However, the band judiciously and tastefully works in distorted guitar that bears more resemblance to djent than anything else in its syncopated, stop-start style. While this is not necessarily anything new – Sleep Token have made a name for themselves over the last few years playing a lugubrious combination of djent and R&B with funk breakdowns here and there – nightlife pull it off with aplomb, keeping the mood light and never once letting the pace drag throughout the song’s five-minute runtime.
The band’s R&B influences come to the forefront on new low‘s other two tracks, with “All I Know” taking a slower, more contemplative approach: ‘Is this all that I know/Am I chasing a ghost/When it’s all said and done/You’re the only one.’ The closing song, “Lonely”, is the biggest surprise here – while still containing some melodic electric guitar, it stakes its claim as the requisite ballad with gentle singing and a Latin-tinged, almost bossa nova rhythm complete with trap drums. It should be said that this song is a reinterpretation of “Lonely No More” by Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty fame – as ripe an inspiration for nightlife as any is bound to be – after all, this is the man who struck gold featuring on a certain Santana song that went multi-platinum combining Latin funk with alternative rock.
The main draw for nightlife‘s sound is Romero’s singing, which moves effortlessly between swaggering, smooth confidence, and on-his-knees pleading. His production work for the band is also stellar, leaving to waste the over-compressed sound of most modern pop and metal music and giving the music the space it needs to breathe in the mix. This is plainly evident on the band’s following EP, 2022’s fallback (covered here on EIN before I joined the team), which saw the band tighten the screws on their sound even further into sublime blasts of funk-metal.
The showstopping “fool me once” features Romero reaching for the stars in its closing moments – and R&B excursions. The subtle, low-key “hard for me” could almost be a Drake song sonically, but its lyrics (‘Glossy eyеs like tints leaving nothing up above/Hop in the sky and forget it/Leaving the ground like I rent it/Feeling no relief‘) showcase more depth than the navel-gazing Champagne Papi does these days. The title track plays like a mini-epic from Prince‘s heyday featuring funk-djent riffing and soloing from guitarist Julian Lofton, while the closing “no pleasure” lives up to nightlife‘s soulpunk aspirations by ramping up the tempo and delivering a true crossover rush of a song. It’s a minor masterpiece in a short but sweet catalogue of bangers that would play equally well in a club, a dive bar, or an outdoor festival.
Since the release of fallback in 2022, nightlife has released a total of three new songs: 2023’s “face2face”, which sounds like the Backstreet Boys with the gain cranked up (this is meant positively), and 2024’s strangeluv single, containing the title track and “i/o”, a one-two punch showcasing different aspects of their sound palette – “strangeluv” begins with some ambient guitar swirling and singing from guitarist Lofton before a strong bass line makes itself known and the song evolves into yet another neo-soul metal banger, Romero’s vocals commanding the song’s thesis statement: ‘So tired of waiting for someone to want me too.‘ The single’s other side, “i/o,” takes the opposite approach, a synth-heavy dance beat underpinning Cher-esque vocoded lyrics from a tongue-in-cheek Romero: ‘So you notice me when I’m alone/But I ain’t never seen your screen name before/Got that Y2K aesthetic with the raindrops on the ground.‘ The work from Lofton and drummer Isaiah Walker throughout the song is masterful in its coordination, with the two locking in together during several key moments of guitar riffing and drum fills. It’s easy to see why MTV referred to nightlife as ‘one of the most exciting sounds in the alternative scene right now,’ calling them ‘unapologetically unique‘ with ‘universal appeal.’
So what comes next for the Baltimore trio? I heard exclusive murmurs from the band that they have new music dropping in December; although I wasn’t privy to it, I can only imagine that if it follows the quality music nightlife has been dropping the last several years, it will be a highlight of the year for me. This band deserves all the roses thrown at their feet, but until their next tour you should follow them on their Facebook and Instagram, and grab their stuff on Bandcamp. Let’s push them through to the stratosphere where they belong, shall we?
nightlife is…
Hansel Romero – vocals, production, keyboards, synthesizer, drum programming
Julian Lofton – bass, guitars, keyboards, synthesizer
Isaiah Walker – drums, drum programming
