Nervous Light Pull Heartstrings with Latest Single ‘Patterns’

Brisbane emo punk lads Nervous Light further expand their sound with latest offering Patterns, released on Friday 30 July. It’s the band’s third single since their popular debut Haunt in June 2020, which was shortly followed by the catchy Outsider in October 2020.

Even though they have only been on the scene for a little over a year now, Nervous Light have proven to be an original and deceptively complex trio with an array of styles and elements in their music which makes them hard to confine to any one genre. The exciting newcomers create a refreshing take on pop punk by incorporating trap elements with honest and relatable lyrics, elegant harmonies and earworm choruses.

Patterns begins with delicate piano joined by picked guitar and spacious programmed hi-hats as chopped vocal samples echo in the background with the repeated line “Going in circles, we fall into patterns.” Live bass and drums with tom fills come in for the verse then grungy riffs and crisp harmonies take over the first chorus. What sounds like inserting and playing a cassette tape is heard before the second verse of piano over modern programmed beats. Layered clean vocals, distorted chugs and busy drums crescendo into a big catchy chorus with passionate screams.

We asked the boys in Nervous Light some questions about the new single.

AAA: Patterns is different from the last two singles. How did this song come together?

NL: I don’t know that we often really go into a writing session with a sense of ‘we want to write a song like this or like that’, but I remember really wanting to build a song entirely around a piano part… everything built really collaboratively and organically from there and wound up becoming one of my favourite songs that we’ve written. (Jordan)

We’ve never really tried to adhere to a genre in particular. If we write it and we all vibe it then we keep pushing with it. We just wanna write stuff that we’re stoked to listen to! This one kind of happened in one night. It’s one of the first that we’ve all contributed to lyrically also, which was cool! (Antony)

We started writing in my music room in 2020 and got together twice a week to have dinner and chip away at writing and developing tracks. Sometimes Jordan or I had most of a song demoed and we would build on that or just a simple sample would get the ball rolling. Patterns was a sure thing after Antony ripped the huge chorus (I think the neighbours heard it) and taking the demo to our producer Jake Randall. (Rich)

AAA: The band must have many different influences to achieve such a unique sound. What are some of them?

NL: Oh man, we have the most ridiculously varied music taste! I take a huge influence from artists like Nothing, Nowhere. and Point North. I’m a sucker for a big chorus which really drove how I wanted to perform that last chorus. (Antony)

I was listening to that kinda stuff as well as gaining appreciation of jazz, jamming The Beatles and revisiting a lot of Tool and Deftones. It was a wild time for musical discovery for myself last year, trying to figure out how to mix highly dynamic music! (Rich)

For this song in particular, I’d personally been listening to a lot of Guccihighwaters and Sleeps X which kind of inspired the piano base. Then it was tailored into a sound similar to some of our past tracks with the more post-hardcore vibe of the reverb heavy leads and big chorus chords to create a really dynamic soundscape in a tight little two minute package. (Jordan)

AAA: With a handful of songs out and a few gigs lined up, what comes next for Nervous Light?

NL: Hopefully some more shows if COVID decides to go away sometime soon! We’ve spent over a year recording now, so we’re super excited to get out of the studio and show people what we’ve been doing!(Antony)

Between all of us, both together and separately, we’ve created a hefty backlog of demos and we’ve also spent the last rear recording an album’s worth of material with our friend Jake – so a lot more music, hopefully a bunch of shows and maybe some touring when the global climate will allow it. (Jordan)

We had a fantastic show lined up with our friends in Sentiment and that got canned last minute – we even tried to rebook it but that fell through too! PolarFest is August 14 so we are really hoping it goes ahead without a hitch! (Rich)

More refined, textured and vulnerable than their first two singles, Patterns showcases all three vocalists and demonstrates that Nervous Light have developed their sound to convey various themes and appeal to a range of audiences in the space of a year. When there are this many sides to a band in just three songs, you can’t help but get excited about what could be next.

Nervous Light will be performing at PolarFest on 14 August.