Nile Long, the new project featuring members of The Brixton Academy, now has a video for their first single “See Your Eyes,” which you can watch above. The track manages to both be very Brixton-Academy like – generally dancey, full of synths, singing that sound like Kermit The Frog wanted to start a new-wave band – but also be very very different than The Brixton Academy. The vocals on “See Your Eyes” are more structured, more locked in than what The Brixton Academy used to do, Nile Long trying to be a more pop-accessible version of, like, a DFA band. It’s overall good…the moments where all the voices go “oh oh ohoh” especially, and the late-song breakdown…but “See Your Eyes” does a good job reminding of what made The Brixton Academy so good, and that was the emotional looseness. In that band, the lyrics were painfully earnest and often awkward, practically stumbling over themselves trying to properly express their often lonely emotions. Nile Long sounds snapped in, the rough edges removed and turned into something bright but without the oooomph aimed at the listener’s heart. Holding Nile Long to standards brought about by The Brixton Academy is unfair…they are a new project…but both sound similar enough where I’m at least thinking about it. It is the sort of stuff that’s probably bound to do well sales wise – note the tags on the above video to get a sense of what Nile Long wants to be – but, at least here, seems to have lost something special.
