Sometimes a band gets their album title just right, a phrase or a single word that tells you everything you need to know about the music within, a string of syllables both specific and expansive.
Nap Eyes are one such band, and Neon Gate is one such title. The Halifax band's latest is sturdy and weighted, intricately designed and so rich with fluorescent colour that it nearly blinds. Push through it, and you find yourself in a world of foreign sensation and familiar comfort. It's a tactile day-glo fantasia, equally as invested in reality as it is in whirling otherness.
That is to say, it's a lot of fun and a lot of feeling. The one-two-three-four (I could keep going) punch of "Eight Tired Starlings," "Dark Mystery Enigma Bird," "Demons" and "Feline Wave Race" opens the record with a run so rich with ideas and goofy, free-form humour that it nearly overwhelms. How can you sustain this many ideas over the length of an album?
Somehow, Nap Eyes manage it. The quartet manage to keep the energy — a very energy, multidimensional but featherlight, full of momentum but never sweaty or frantic — until the final note. Nap Eyes find themselves on a particular, illuminating wavelength this time around, and they leave their gate swung open for whatever may come their way next.