Nightmare of You's Debut Turns 15 Today
2005 was a year of great musical discovery for me. I went to college, and using my own computer–plus unlimited free time and a faster internet connection than I’d ever had at home–proceeded to download countless albums by luminaries like David Bowie, The Cure, Morrissey, and The Beatles. I was moving beyond the tastes I’d developed in high school, i.e., my taste for punk, pop-punk, and hardcore.
In October 2005, my good friend, Carl, sent me an mp3 from a band called Nightmare of You. I’d never heard of them. The song was called, “Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf,” and I loved it right away. It sounded enough like pop-punk to make sense to me, but it was different, too, and I downloaded the rest of the self-titled album just as fast as I could, which back then wasn’t very fast at all.
I spent the rest of that semester enamored with Nightmare of You, the band’s debut offering. My freshman roommate, as easygoing a guy as they come, expressed his annoyance that I kept listening to it. On December 16, while home for the holidays, my friends and I drove into the city to catch Nightmare of You at the Beat Kitchen. They opened for Circa Survive and The (International) Noise Conspiracy. Before leaving, I dyed my shaggy freshman hair black. At the concert, I could smell the dye oozing off of me, though I’d rinsed most of it out. The band played great, and the album hasn’t left my rotation since.
Nightmare of You turns 15 today. I’d like to celebrate it track-by-track, if that’s alright with you. Let’s go.
“The Days Go By Oh So Slow”
Every classic album needs a classic opener, and “The Days Go By" more than fits the bill. That guitar lead, man, I kiss my fingers. The opening couplet introduces the song, the album, and really, the band:
Take a seat and catch your breath
You’re only working towards your death
In the music video, NOY’s lead singer Brandon Reilly walks around Chinatown at night. He’s wearing an outfit that screams 2005. Back then, winter hats were required by law to have ear flaps and a pom. The rest of the group plays in what appears to be a Chinese restaurant or shop. Lots of big open collars, as was the style back then.
“Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf”
My first Nightmare of You song, and another masterpiece. I’d like to concentrate on some of Brandon’s outstanding lyrics.
And we’ve learned that life is one big game
Where the winners are all getting paid
It was true back then, and it’s true today. Brandon delivers a thoughtful political agenda inside a Trojan horse of misery and melodrama. The chorus ends with:
Joking that we’d end our lives
But we weren’t joking all the time
My favorite lyricists tend to be the ones who speak truthfully about regret, sadness, depression, and dysfunction. My favorite songwriters take those lyrics and make them melodically interesting. Brandon, at the peak of his powers here, jams way too many syllables into the chorus, but it works, and the rush of hearing him get away with it somehow mirrors the rush our narrator feels when he jerks the steering wheel to the median.
“Thumbelina”
The strumming pattern that opens “Thumbelina” has wormed its way into every band I’ve ever started with my friend and muse, Kyle. Clean, herky-jerky Britpop stuff - very tasteful.
The lyrics to “Thumbelina” are something else. I don’t know much about Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 fairytale, but surely it isn’t about a girl who hitchhikes across the country sleeping with perverts. Or maybe it is, what do I know?
There’s a lot to admire about this track, and it’s one of the band’s most popular songs, but for my money, it’s the weakest song on Nightmare of You. I love the change in tempo between the verses and pre-choruses. I love the Beatles-esque harmonies toward the end. I love how well it goes over live. But I don’t love how inscrutable this song remains for me, nearly 15 years after I first started picking it apart. I straight up don’t like some of the words Brandon uses, even when his tongue is planted firmly in his cheek: loon, cowgirl, dame. This one mystifies me. That being said, I never skip it.
“My Name is Trouble”
Taking a page from the Tigermilk playbook, NOY include one electronic-leaning song on their debut. I’d like to highlight the drumming of Sammy Siegler on this particular track. That’s him in the red and white-striped shirt. The way Sammy weaves in and out of the electronic pulse is really something. He’s terrific on every song, but this one stands out to me at the moment.
Nightmare of You released three music videos, “My Name is Trouble” being the third. I won’t get into the plot here, but I would like to discuss the band’s clothing in the video, and in general around this time. Every member is shown wearing a collared shirt, jacket, or polo. I can’t overstate how strange and tantalizing that was for me in 2005. The bands I liked simply didn’t dress like that. They wore t-shirts. New Found Glory was still a year away from becoming collared shirt guys on the Coming Home press circuit. The word “metrosexual” got tossed around a lot back then–almost always disparagingly–but Nightmare of You, NFG, and other punks gave me the confidence to abandon my high school uniform, so make of that what you will.
I’ve just crossed the line from fashion to crime
5. “Why Am I Always Right?”
In the interest of keeping the show moving right along, I won’t say much about this song except that it’s terrific and features the immortal line–
You’re just like your dad.
Surprise!
You don’t only share his eyes
“I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard”
In 2014, I wrote a story for a small Chicago arts journal called–get ready for it–The Chicago Arts Journal. Basically, I ranked my 200 favorite songs and wrote a blurb about each one. Nightmare of You came in at #12 with “I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard.” That’s miraculous and probably insane given the talent on my list. (Songs by the Velvet Underground, Kanye West, and Stevie Wonder rank lower than NOY’s “hit” single.) Here’s what I said about the song:
In 2005, I was on my first winter break from college. While drinking Keystone Light in my friend’s parents’ basement, I spent one last confusing night with my high school sweetheart. I knew it was over for us. This was the song on the stereo.
I’ll close by saying that the exquisite bass on this song was played by Ryan Heil.
“Ode to Serotonin”
Nightmare of You must’ve realized that following “I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard” is an impossible task, so they slotted this, the album’s shortest song, in the #7 position. It’s fast and catchy, and the lyrics showcase Brandon’s clever wordplay. All throughout Nightmare of You, he uses alliteration and slant rhymes and interior rhyming to great effect, although what he says sometimes makes no sense.
“Marry Me”
I felt a love of such deafening weight
Dangling from a balustrade of shilly-shally
Nightmare of You is ever so slightly front-loaded. I do enjoy “Marry Me,” but I’ve never put it on a playlist or skipped ahead to hear it. A slower song is definitely welcome at this point, but the b-side, “You Don’t Have to Tell Me I Was a Terrible Man,” is stronger.
“In the Bathroom Is Where I Want You”
Generally speaking, pop-punk bands are not known for creating mature music about sex and sexuality. Nightmare of You has several songs that go beyond the typical boy-wants-girl narrative, this one being the best. “In the Bathroom Is Where I Want You” finds our narrator confused about how to proceed with a relationship. Should he continue to court a woman with whom he has a strictly sexual relationship, or should he focus his efforts on finding love with somebody else? Ultimately, he chooses the former, fantasizing about having sex “against the graffiti wall” in some dingy dance club bathroom. It’s a surprisingly tender and realistic depiction of a young man’s feelings. The melody also kicks ass.
“The Studded Cinctures”
Here’s the tenth and penultimate track on Nightmare of You. The chorus is irresistible, the piano counterpoint expertly deployed, and I can’t think of another lyric that features the words “pomade” and “cinctures,” which I had to google.
Nightmare of You was issued on vinyl–along with the overlooked and underrated Bang! EP–in 2008. Such beautiful colored wax and all new artwork. I bought it online when it was first released, and it was available in 2009 when I caught Nightmare of You (plus Hotel Ahead, Brian Bonz, and Plushgun) at Reggie’s. It seems to be out-of-print now and fetches respectable prices on eBay and discogs.
“Heaven Runs on Oil”
Nightmare of You ends with its most overtly political track, a song that challenges American foreign policy and imperialism called “Heaven Runs on Oil.” Bear in mind the historical context into which this song was released. George W. Bush, newly reelected, continued to wage an unpopular war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Operation Iraqi Freedom, as it came to be known by some, left an indelible impression on my generation. I’d just cast my first vote for John Kerry, and thereafter, I grew more cynical and critical toward America’s politicians and institutions. This song certainly played a role in my political development. That it was delivered in such an appealing package didn’t hurt. It’s the album’s meatiest track by far, a five-minute epic that ends with what can only be called a chant.
The bombs ring, we all sing, “Freedom at last!”
The bombs ring, children sing, “Freedom at last!”
Conclusion
In a stacked year that gave us Sufjan Stevens’s Illinois, Kanye West’s Late Registration, and The National’s Alligator, Nightmare of You managed to put out the very best record of all, a streamlined collection of tunes that helped turn me on to Britpop, new wave, the dictionary, lefty politics, and jangly indie rock. I know a ton of Nightmare of You fans, but it’s hard for me to assess the band’s popularity and influence today. Maybe it doesn’t matter. If you haven’t heard them, give them a shot. Start with their debut. It made a big impression on me, and I’m happy it’s been in my life for 15 years.
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