The key to understanding Cian Nugent is "Things Don't Change That Fast." That's the title of the first single from Night Fiction. To begin, the Irish guitarist delicately strums the same chord five times, one for each time he sings a word in the title, demonstrating quite plainly that no, things don't change that fast. This ethos applies to Nugent's career—Night Fiction is his third album, but his first as a singer/songwriter—as well as his technique. On his earlier instrumental releases, he sometimes let the spaces between notes breathe so long that you'd be likely to find yourself checking the headphone jack to make sure you hadn't somehow become disconnected. These spaces don't appear much on Night Fiction; instead each song unwinds unhurried and the members of his backing band, the Cosmos, take their time making their presence known.
Nugent is the type of guitarist who can dazzle with his attention to detail on the fretboard, as on the album's sole solo instrumental track, "Lucy," but he is also content to ride out on one chord for several measures if the song calls for it. At first, the guitar feels too high in the mix—it's appropriate that the leadoff track is called "Lost Your Way"—and the licks he plays sometimes feel like muscle-memory fills that could have come from the Jeff Healey Band, incongruous with the rest of the album. His voice is an "if Kurt Vile can do it, so can I" approximation, but Nugent makes braver and more inspired melodic choices. Even if his voice doesn't hit all of the right notes, there's an appealing warmth and conviction to his singing.
Nugent also makes up for those irritating suburban-blues licks with his exquisite chordings and inspired solos. It also helps that the Cosmos are an especially dynamic backing band, sounding alternately as ferocious as Dirty Three or as mellow as the Section. His subject matter seems mostly to be interpersonal strains, and his words are simple, but wise and wide open for interpretation. The aforementioned "Things Don't Change That Fast" could be a monologue a practicing addict delivers to a recovering addict: "There may be only one difference between the hopeless and the brave, one's too specific and the other's too vague," he sings.
As with Nugent's previous releases, many of the songs start in one style to become something else altogether. "Year of the Snake," the glorious final track on Night Fiction, spends its first minute with the guitar gradually uncoiling before the organ and viola eventually enter the fold. The cymbals and bass arrive by the third minute, and by minute four it has morphed into a "Sister Ray"-like rave-up. Nugent is singing out by the seven-minute mark, sounding more like Pete Shelley than the occasionally flat voice he uses on the rest of the record. This is the catharsis promised at the beginning of the album: Things don’t change that fast, but when they do, they change dramatically, and for the better.
