Nightlands slips the audience of Township into a dream land

by Scott Wilson

Much like how the musician never truly takes a day off and is always prepared for a last-minute gig, so must be the music writer. After a nighttime bicycle cruise around Chicago’s lakeshore, an email might pop up with a +1 approval for a show the writer signed on for months ago and completely forgot about. Now the writer scrambles onto Gchat and looks for some likely partner who’s down to clown on an hour’s notice. That secured, there still awaits sub-45-degree autumn weather for nearly eight blocks to get to the venue. Once there it’s clear that all they have at the bar is liquor, PBR, and fancy IPA beer when what would really hit the spot is a mid-priced lager. Life’s hard; sigh.

The bar-slash-brunch place called Township hosts the evening’s revelries. From the outside, it looks like a cute little corner café with picture windows and weird found-art chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Once you get inside and walk past the little metal tables, coffee station, and waiter dressed in a white shirt and black apron, you get to a large, well-lit, but mostly vacant room with a single maitre d’ standing behind a podium in the middle of the room. This man takes the concertgoer’s twelve dollars and issues fluorescent armbands for those wishing to buy liquor, PBR, or fancy IPA, then he ushers you into yet another secret room. This third room is painted black, has a cutout in the wall connecting it to the main bar, and is lightly populated by bearded men in eccentric garb and women who wear thick-rimmed glasses. There’s also a stage with a bunch of speakers and lights overhead.

Before Nightlands comes on, the opening band, Chicago locals Thin Hymns, play an excellent set. They sound like the Dirty Projectors, but more melodic and less disjointed, yet still kind of weird and dreamy in a way that only three men with falsetto or nearly falsetto voices can pull off.

Nightlands’ set starts at an hour ‘til midnight, which, for most people, is a little late on a Sunday. The already ample arm-swinging room of the individual audience member grows wider as the weaker music fans are weeded out by a process of attrition. “Oh I have to work tomorrow, I’ll see y’all later.” becomes a mantra repeated with increasing frequency throughout the night. It doesn’t help that Nightlands’ music can best be defined as a “lullaby”.

This particular Nightlands show is composed of four music makers on stage. First, of course, is the main man and Philadelphian, Dave Hartley who plays the guitar, foot pedals, and sings. There’s also a slide guitarist to his left and another slide guitarist/trumpeter/bass clarinetist/foot pedalist to his far right. The fourth music maker is a wooden electronic drum machine sitting on top of an amplifier, sitting on top of a chair, with a microphone in front of it. The metronomic rhythms of the drum machine do little to alleviate the sleepy-time feel of the show, especially from songs like the cover of Art Garfunkel’s “99 Miles From L.A.”.

None of this is to say that the show is bad. It’s just dreamy and when the time is closer to Monday breakfast than to Sunday dinner it is a little hard to stay focused. The down-to-clown partner seems more down than the clown as she rests her head on the writer’s shoulder. Nightlands takes the remainder of the audience into a gentle closing of the bar and ending of the weekend as the drum machine sits bumping away.