NIGHTBIRD CASINO – interview

Introduce your band, and describe your latest release:
Hey, I’m James Moore, vocalist and guitarist from Nightbird Casino. We’re a four-piece post-punk inspired alternative rock band currently based in southern Oregon. Our last release “Radio Anxiety” just dropped on 4/20.

What’s the hardest part about being a band in this day and age?
In short, the internet. To expand on that, the sheer amount of competition you have (there are over 70,000 songs released each day on Spotify) makes it difficult to stand out. Record labels are mainly concerned with social media, rather than your actual music, so success is largely contingent on how good you are at amassing a following on TikTok, rather than the quality of the music you produce.

When did you realise that your project had the potential to be much more than just a fun idea?
When I sat back and listened to our first EP – the band started as a two-person side project, and it was very much “just for fun”. We recorded four songs in a friends home studio with no real intention to do much with it but once I started listening to it I realized there was some real potential to do more. I was genuinely taken aback by how good it was – prior to that as a two person “band”, we hadn’t heard the songs performed by a full band. In the studio we were able to record all the parts we normally couldn’t hear together and it just kind of blew me away.

Tell us about your latest release, why should we check it out?
Our latest release is a single called Radio Anxiety – it came out on 4/20 and the music video just dropped a few days ago. You should check it out if you enjoy music in the vein of Interpol, She Wants Revenge, or if you’re generally inclined toward 80s post-punk/gothic music.

How does a song typically come together for you?
It varies, but generally it takes a few months of trial and error before we really settle on something. Usually one of us may write a riff or a chord progression, usually on piano or guitar, and then present it to the rest of the band. If it passes that litmus test, everyone starts developing their own parts and we’ll generally just play through it every week several times until it starts coalescing into something resembling a song. We’ll probably toss parts that don’t work and add new things during this period. Eventually once we have the basics down I’ll go off on my own and write the lyrics and then it’s just a matter of refining it from there. Usually we’ll start playing a song out before it’s finished as well to get a gauge of the audience’s reaction too.

How would you describe your sound to an unfamiliar reader?
We’ve been described as “if Interpol and Radiohead had a baby” and “jazzy Deftones” and I like both those descriptions.

What do you want listeners to take away from listening to your band?
Whatever they want. That’s the great thing about music, listeners should all be able to extrapolate their own meaning. I don’t write songs with any sort of on-the-nose “message” but rather try to leave it open to interpretation, both musically and lyrically.

Where would you really like to tour that you haven’t done so yet, and why?
Southern California. I lived there for quite some time and the music scene is just incredible. So many great venues and bands – and definitely easier to build an audience than where we are now (southern Oregon)

How would you say that the sound of your band has progressed over the years?
It’s definitely more cohesive. Our first album (2020’s Gregorian Nap) was very eclectic – there was a full orchestral piece on there, a few electronic pieces, an acoustic ballad, a jazz fusion song – we had two different vocalists and I don’t know that I’d really settled on how my voice “sounded” if that makes sense … several years later were very much still experimental to a degree, but our music has a more cohesive sound, songs sound like they “go together” and my vocals are more consistent.