Premiere: Nightjacket, ‘Pink and Yellow Roses’

Kevin Bronson on May 23rd, 2019

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Flowers can symbolize a lot of things. The titular “Pink and Yellow Roses” in the new single from L.A. dream-pop band Nightjacket form a bouquet of regret for a star-crossed love.

It’s exemplary of what Nightjacket does best on its debut album “Beauty in the Dark” — rolling melodies over a painterly backdrop of guitars and synth, with Holland Belle’s luminescent vocals echoing the heights of hope and depths of heartsickness. It’s an album that loosely documents both, and also one that comes nearly four year’s after their “Eternal Phases” EP.

To review: The classically trained Belle segued from folk singer to shoegaze siren after she met guitarist Jordan Wiggins, leading to that initial release. Shortly thereafter, Belle put the band on the back burner to move to Berlin to be with her boyfriend. A few intercontinental trips later, Nightjacket returned to the album, which ended up being recorded in four different studios with Adam Lasus (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Yo La Tengo) producing and James Krausse (Beyoncé) mixing. The result is a shimmering melancholy that recalls the likes of Mazzy Star, the Sundays and 10,000 Maniacs.

The new single, one of the first recorded for what was then planned as a six-song EP, was made at Matter Music in North Hollywood with Lasus and Jon Graber. “We experimented with analog synths across the entire album, and on this song we used a Sequential Prophet Rev2, which you can hear on the bridge,” Belle says. “I think it really helps give the section and song a sense of place.”

And that place? It’s that spot late a night when one’s inner conversations become deafening — an alone time that the head and heart insist shouldn’t be alone.

Says Belle: “‘Pink And Yellow Roses’ is about a person who can’t be loved – who can’t recognize it or accept it, which is more heartbreaking than not being able to love them yourself.”

“Beauty in the Dark” is out May 31.

||| Stream: “Pink and Yellow Roses”