Now and then, a record comes along that cuts to the quick of our political and spiritual moment. Blue Days, Black Nights has zero pretenses about being one of those records. The debut by De La Noche, which is fronted by Rosebuds and Gayngs member Ivan Howard, is a frivolous soufflé of soft-rock baby-makers and disco deliria that could have been crafted any time in the last 50 years. The song titles are basically just search terms for moods and sounds: “Dreams,” “Blue,” “Lush,” “Stars,” “Spooky,” and “Champagne.” It’s music for lotion-y late nights and cocktails with activated charcoal, like if Rhye dropped his falsetto and made a ’70s Italian film score. It doesn’t cut to the quick of anything, but it’s a lot of silky fun.
If Blue Days, Black Nights is not thematically rich, it compensates with sonic decadence. The songs are drizzled with just enough truffle oil to elevate their essential sturdiness without obscuring it. As you might expect, based on Gayngs and The Rosebuds’ whole-album cover of Sade, the vibe is redolent of ’80s easy-listening and synth-funk from Peter Gabriel to Tears for Fears, but modernized with the refined pulses of contemporary electronic music.
After “Avenues” sets the scene—city at night, lights smeared in the rain—De La Noche gets down to it with “Dreams,” building fluorescent dream-pop over sinister bass lines and topping it with a memorable, heart-tugging chorus, kissed with one perfect pitched-up vocal sample that reminds you that Howard worked with Kanye West—speaking of which, “Blue” is a great “Flashing Lights” pastiche.
The record is so consistent with Howard’s other work that it’s surprising to learn that he came on board after it was written and recorded by his old college friends Robert Rogan and Brian Weeks. Rogan and Weeks recorded the De La Noche songs with scratch vocals and sent them to Howard in Portland to see what he thought. Apparently, everyone was so happy with the results that they wound up Postal Servicing the whole thing. With all the tracks already in place, down to Matt Douglas’s blue-steel sax, it’s surprising how organic and integrated it feels. The long friendship and prior collaboration (Weeks was a Rosebud) surely helped breathe life from afar into De La Noche’s sound, and its particular featherlight heft.
