Over the past decade, Ed Nash, the bassist for the band Bombay Bicycle Club, was writing his own material. Cramped into the back of a tour bus that traveled from coast to coast, he felt that he needed his own outlet – something personal to him.
It was not until his band took an indefinite hiatus in 2014 that things really started taking off and these ideas he had finally started to materialize.
“The Pace of the Passing” is the culmination of all of Nash’s experience – everything he learned while he was out on the road.
“My plan is to do this in the same way I was doing Bombay Bicycle Club,” Nash said in an interview with DIY Magazine. “That was my life, for 10 years.”
Working in collaboration with Chris Coady, the producer for bands like TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as well as his old drummer and friend Suren De Saram, all the gears were set in motion.
The album has a very promising start with “Charon,” a distant-sounding hymn, with vocal layering reminiscent of Fleet Foxes. Backdropped with calming, hypnotic guitar leads and churning, fast-paced drums, it is a very cinematic opening. It felt like it was setting the tone for the whole album, but by the time the second track “Sisyphus” rolls in, that whole idea gets turned on its side.
In this song it is obvious that Coady had a lot of creative control, due to the fact that it sounds like a typical Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. Everything in the mix is built around this dense, ‘80s-esque synth bass. It is unmistakably catchy, but nothing about the track really jumped out. It sounds like something H&M would play for their shoppers while they try on skinny jeans – just dull, uninspired background noise.
Unfortunately, this trend continues for the next couple of songs.
“Palm’s Backside” features Marika Hackman, who harmonizes surprisingly well with Nash, but the song drags on for too long and does not deliver enough.
“Alright Alright Alright,” “Midas Touch” and “Party for Two” blend into one another. Nothing about these tracks stood out or gave the listener anything new or challenging.
What carried these songs and made them listenable was the drum work of De Saram, who did an excellent job throughout this whole project.
“You Thought I Was Your Friend (I Want to Hurt You)” was a pleasant surprise. The buildups were very satisfying and the brass instrumentation toward the end carried a lot of emotion and made it really stand out from the rest of the album.
The closing track “Terra” had a very unique opening. It started with a sample of what might have been Nash breathing, with an instrumental sample slowly built up over it. After that, it delved right back into what the album had been doing for most of its runtime, playing it safe with a run-of-the-mill indie rock sound. It is a shame, really.
There were parts of this album that showed a lot of promise and a lot that could have been built on, but it just never happened. It seemed as if Nash was trying to achieve a certain sound that never got fully realized or maybe he is still learning and his best work is yet to come.
For a debut album, it really was not that bad, but there are a multitude of bands that work with this sound and do it so much better: Alt-J, Death Cab for Cutie and Band of Horses just to name a few.
Ultimately, the mixdowns are great but the material just is not there yet. Give it time, it might be soon.
