Music in Focus: ‘Beach’ by Nightshifts

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Nightshifts is the recording project of Toronto-based songwriter Andrew Oliver. He works his magic across vintage synths, groovy guitars, and drum machines during late-night recording sessions to create soulful and cosmic pop tunes. Nightshifts delivers slow-building progressions of phased synthesizers and delay-coated guitars to create powerful atmospheres that feel close-at-home. The project is both exciting and complex with a fast-growing reputation for kaleidoscopic production and soulful songwriting.

His music carries an underlying theme of imbalance and the challenge to stay present, with the musician confiding, “I very often get caught up thinking about past situations, and looking towards future ones. I write a lot about this imbalance. And ironically, the times I feel most in the moment are when I’m working on music.” Aiming to create music to teleport you to paradise, even if it’s just for three minutes, Nightshifts creates a space to both boogie and feel introspective, whilst learning and feeling something new with each and every turn.

“Beach” is centered around the notion of wondering what would have happened if we took a different road. Honing in on an impossibly idyllic environment with peaches growing on the beach and sunflowers waving, this magical dreamland is a paradise for a vivid imagination. Nightshifts explains how the wild catalog of mental visuals is to mimic the way we often exaggerate what we could have had, had we made different decisions, confiding, “I have a tendency to daydream, to second guess choices I’ve made in the past, and to think about what could have been.”

In true Nightshifts style, the romantic indie guitar loops sit over a subtle, vintage-synth soundscape, giving us a calming, mesmerizing intro to “Beach.” The exciting, zesty new feel of this single comes in with an electrifying building beat, glazed in a grittier tone, bolting electro elements, and a fast-paced array of dynamics. The Toronto artist explains, “I wanted the chill verses to mimic a calm and steady reality, and the hyper choruses to be a technicolor imagining of this impossible, fantasized other life paths.”

Having garnered millions of streams on Spotify alone, Nightshifts has made a name for himself through his unique and innovative sound. Following the release of a remix of Bon Iver’s “Michicant,” Oliver was praised by Justin Vernon himself, further propelling the Canadian artist into the limelight and giving him a taste of what he is truly capable of.

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