Nightwalker
“Firehouse Mountain”
1997, no label
Only a real asshole band would put out a one-sided 7″ with one song on it. They couldn’t cough up some piece of garbage for the B-side? B-sides are the place to put garbage. There are no rules for B-sides. B-sides can be anything. Not having a B-side on your 7″ feels like arrogance. I don’t think they’re saying that they don’t have anything for the B-side; I think they’re saying that YOU don’t deserve it. They WANT to let you down. You expected two songs? Fuck off, you’re getting one.
What kind of band does that? What kind of jerks are we dealing with here?
Ladies and germs, I give you Nightwalker.
Best I can tell, they’re the Evil Guided by Voices. They’re the Black Lodge Guided by Voices. They sound like Robert Pollard took some of GBV’s more far-out basement tapes and created his own arch rival band out of them.
Nightwalker are the opposite of GBV.
GBV give you an avalanche of songs; Nightwalker give you a slow, slow trickle.
GBV have a weakness for pop melody; Nightwalker don’t touch the stuff.
GBV seek to expand past their lo-fi sound; Nightwalker are devoted, in macho fashion, to all things hissy and slimy and low-budget.
Bottom line: Nightwalker didn’t sell out. Nightwalker kept their jobs at the factory. Nightwalker never ate French onion soup with major label A&R guys in New York. Nightwalker think that Guided by Voices are a bunch of indie-rock pussies.
Nightwalker are one of the voices in Robert Pollard’s head.
As of this writing, this record is the second of four appearances by Nightwalker in our world. The first was a fake split-single in 1994. Three years later, they return with another song, “Firehouse Mountain”. It’s a psychedelic brooder, lo-fi and full of basement spirits and beer breath. It would fit in well somewhere on Beyond the Calico Wall. The lyrics are gloomy (“it used to be such fun/ the kick has gone away/ very few things excite you”) and the mood is sour, but that’s normal for garage psych. Then some weirdo laughs like a maniac during the closing dirge as if to mock the song’s darkness. It’s Nightwalker’s most tuneful moment. I dig it.
In 1997, Guided by Voices were in transition. A new album with a new band was coming out in the summer. In the preceding winter and spring, Pollard put out a small batch of independent 7″s to tide us over.
Also maybe, and perhaps even unintentionally, records like this were Pollard’s way of saying that even if GBV blows up big and winds up hanging out with Stone Temple Pilots at the Grammys, Pollard will still be a weirdo.
He still loves the 7″ record. He still likes far-out shit. He still has a voice in his head telling them that ragged scum-rock is the one true light.