Nights and Weekends by Remote Places is a short album of five songs. But do not let the brevity fool you; Nights and Weekends is full of vibrancy. A solo project of Philadelphia native Justin Geller, Nights and Weekends sounds like the featured songs of an ’80s/’90s soundtrack resurfacing to the modern world after decades.
Remote Places Sunrise
“Come and go as you please / I’m always here when you call”: these are the first lyrics of Nights and Weekends, the first lines of “Places You Go”. Just from the onset, Remote Places takes the listener in, welcomes the listener to a remote place in time, and as the album continues, the listener travels in time.
With reverberating notes lasting like a flash from a camera, “It All Comes Back to You” is full of a mystic kind of quality. The center of the song is spacey, whirling instrumentals and smoky background vocals. The drums have an intricate pattern that sets the tone of the song and drives a circular motion, which “all comes back to you.”
“Superluminal” opens with a darker, spookier, tunnel feeling: “everything else is in the past.” The layered harmonies mixed with modern influences, singing, “we are all superluminal,” resonate in outer space and echo with symphonic rock sounds a la Yes, or other experimental sounds and harmonies that The Beach Boys toyed with in the ’60s.
Striking piano chords opening “2 Late” evokes John Lennon’s intro to “Imagine”. “2 Late” has the structure of a ballad mixed with electronic beats. A metronome ticks behind Geller’s mournful and soulful vocals marking the song like a memoriam of memory.
“There’s Nothing For Us Here” picks up where “2 Late” leaves off: “what we left behind were scratches on the floor / the mistakes we made before”. “There’s Nothing For Us Here” begins slowly but builds into the guitar’s piercing higher notes, ringing. The concert vibes from the drums intensifies, and the music becomes arena-like; a top of the mountain euphoria, the climax to the movie.
Nights and Weekends is a quick view of a sun’s orbit from dawn to dusk, or of the mind’s introspection of present to past. And the album art appeals to this idea, a sun setting around a mountain peak, making a lasting streak across the sky.
