Nightmare of You awakens from a bad dream
Photo credit: Handout | The band Nightmare of You hails from Long Island, NY.
Four years ago, Nightmare of You was on the fast track to success. The band, including singer Brandon Reilly from Long Island scene heroes The Movielife, had released its eponymous debut on Warner Music Group affiliate EastWest, and it had done so well that it was slated to be transferred to the prestigious Sire Records label. Nightmare of You's mix of indie rock and '80s pop, including the catchy Cure-tinged "The Days Go By Oh So Slow" and the Smiths-y "I Want to Be Buried in Your Backyard," landed them on big tours and attracted a growing fan base.
Then, it was all put on hold.
"We lost a lot of momentum," says Nightmare of You guitarist Joseph McCaffrey. "There was a lot of talk and people looking over your shoulder, but a year later we still weren't in the studio. Nobody seemed really willing to commit to us, so we decided to take the bull by the horns."
Reilly and McCaffrey asked to be released from their Warner contract. They decided to manage themselves. They started touring intensely. And, most importantly, they started work on new music.
The resulting album, "Infomaniac," arrives in stores Aug. 4 on their own Bevonshire label. It's even more accomplished than their first.
"We found our own kind of voice," Reilly says. "It's a pop record in a pure sense, influenced by The Beatles and David Bowie, but there's a modern quality to it. We found more of a common ground for all our influences."
With new bassist Brandon Meyer and new drummer Michael Fleischmann, Reilly says "Infomaniac" is an attempt to capture the times we're living in. "If the last generation was the technology generation, this one is the information generation," he says. "There's an endless amount of data that you can gather from all sorts of sources, and it becomes addictive to people. They almost use it as a drug, finding out every detail about celebrities or politicians. It becomes a big part of their lives."
The album also has a sense of rushing to catch up, whether it's through the sleepyhead in "Good Morning, Waster" or the hospital patient who runs into a jaded record exec who tells him: "Everyone's a pop star. Everyone is going to make it, and you could be the next one, kid, just don't you dare say what you really feel."
McCaffrey says despite those lyrics, he doesn't think about business all that much. "When I'm on stage or in the studio, I'm in the moment, I'm not thinking about business," he says.
"But the rest of the time, Monday to Friday, that's what I'm working on."
Sure, Reilly says, there are better ways to spend time than booking the band's tours or crafting marketing plans. "When you're not part of the corporate machine, you have to work hard to get the word out," he says. "But we get to do things completely on our own terms."
By doing everything themselves, Nightmare of You hopes they will figure out a way to succeed on their own. "It's not like taking a course," McCaffrey says. "We can kind of create the future. There's no mold that we have to follow. The old traditional methods aren't necessarily working right now, anyway. It's definitely an exciting time."
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