Kevin Bronson on February 25th, 2017

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Nights & Weekends make “love songs for grown-ups,” and indeed their forthcoming album “Music for Marriage” is like eavesdropping on conversations between a couple who are beyond mere pillow talk and engaged in the negotiations of day-to-day life. The couple in question is Daron and Jenny Hollowell, whom many know from their role in White Iris Records and other ventures. The album, created “in the midst of new parenthood, career shifts and a cross-country move,” was produced by their Highland Park neighbor, Adam Goldman (Fol Chen), who crafted an understated but dreamy soundscape for the songs. Says Goldman: “I was struck by how beautifully the songs dealt with the kinds of heartbreak that come with adulthood — when it’s no longer just about the boy or girl you’re pining for. Friendship, betrayal, disappointment in yourself and others, resignation, anxieties about the future. … Those are the things that can break a grown-up heart.”

“We didn’t set out to make a record,” says Daron, the onetime singer-guitarist in the ’90s Arizona post-hardcore band Four Hundred Years. “We were just going through this massive series of transitions and needed a creative outlet.” Adds Jenny, a novelist and performer, “We started writing these songs as a way to escape, but looking at them now, they’re very much a documentation of the moment we were in, about what it feels like to be new at something, and not entirely in control.” The album is on the way this spring via Ring the Alarm, and the lead single “Half Moon Heart” might appeal to fans of the less-is-more approach of bands like The xx, or duos such as Dean & Britta, Club 8 and GEMS.

||| Stream: “Half Moon Heart”