In Passenger, Nightbus move through a disenchanted present, made of glass and rain-soaked concrete. The Manchester trio — Olive Rees, Jake Cottier, and Zac Melrose — debut with an album that is both an urban journey and a mirror of the psyche: between doom, uncertainty, and dependence, the listener drifts through liminal spaces where night bleeds into day and reality merges with dream.
The record weaves together electronic pulses and wave-rock guitars, nodding to New Order (Angels Mortz), broken-beat UK garage and fleeting rave echoes (Somewhere, Nowhere), occasionally sliding into acid tones (Ascension) or, more canonically, into a melodic catharsis à la The XX or Slowdive. Landslide rewinds the clock to a Joy Division-style dance floor, only to dissolve it into a dreamy haze; Host, instead, takes the Bristol route — febrile and narcotic.
Recorded at The Nave in Leeds with Alex Greaves, Passenger alternates reverb, compressed drums and obsessive melodies, evoking a constant tension that finds full expression in the group’s multimedia performances. The band’s personal “Gotham” stretches between Manchester and Stockport — city and suburb, urban energy and industrial decay — and you can feel it throughout the album, as both backdrop and frame for their stories.
The references are clear, and so is the generational urge not to rely on a single aesthetic. Yet Nightbus still lack that spark that could turn influence into identity — to make the music they love (and we love) into something truly their own, safely outside the comfort zone of a beautiful but never fully historicised imaginary.