Craving a song that immediately sweeps you up and pulls you into a completely different time and place? Fleeting Persuasion's new single does just that.
Armed with a honeyed voice and a penchant for brooding electronic-tinged indie-rock, ‘Night Arrives’ is the newest track from Fleeting Persuasion, the latest project from Melbourne based creative James Spencer Harrison.
Due for release tomorrow, June 1, we’ve got a sneak peek with the premiere of the video clip for ‘Night Arrives’ which you can exclusively watch below.
Keep up with the latest music news, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
Having already released several well-received albums, singles and EPs under the moniker J M S Harrison, Fleeting Persuasion was born out of a desire for creating music with a denser and richer full-band sound.
With a new project and new sound, Harrison released Fleeting Persuasion’s debut album Forever Caught. Here he delivered an impressive set of songs that possessed echoes of The Cure, tightly woven post-rock and Australian acts such as Bluebottle Kiss filtered through his unique brand of heart-on-sleeve melancholia.
Fast forward to the middle of 2021 and unable to jam with a drummer and complete a half-finished new album due to COVID restrictions, Harrison began to write a new bunch of songs, making a stunning foray into cinematic storytelling and electronic soundscapes.
With already released singles ‘Passed Through’ and ‘Eternal’ embracing this new sound, ‘Night Arrives’ finds Harrison diving even further into the electronic indie-rock realm, carrying listeners away to a feel-good, tranquil ambience.
Dripping with a melancholic nostalgia that is hard to capture, ‘Night Arrives’ is a captivating combination of brightly textured instrumentation, brooding melodies, and big 80s snare drum echo/delays, all woven neatly together with smooth-like-butter production.
Recorded at Crosstown Studios in Preston with longtime collaborator Josh Whitehead, what Harrison has created here is the stuff of lighters-in-the-air magic.
“’Night Arrives’ is another track in collaboration with Josh Whitehead at Crosstown Studios, following recent singles ‘Eternal’ and ‘Passed Through’ all of which have been lots of fun production-wise, seeing myself and Josh use beats and keys to build the base around my guitar-driven songs,” Harrison says.
With nods to the likes of The Cure (listen to the bass and guitar sections) The Midnight and Chromatics, there’s a distinctively hazy, full electro-tinged indie sound that you can’t help but listen to again and again, with much credit to Melbourne musician Danielle Loughnan, whose cinematic and emotionally-charged lead vocals remain lush and tender throughout the near-four-minute track.
“As it came to the time to put my vocals down in the studio, I listened back at home and didn’t feel like it had quite the right impact. So I had the idea to get my friend Danielle Loughnan, who has sung backup vocals on several past songs to sing the lead on this one, with myself on backup vocals.
“She of course did an amazing job!”
Check out the video for ‘Night Arrives’ below.
Evoking nostalgic shades of ’80s soundtracks, Harrison has released a music video ahead of the song’s official release tomorrow that matches the 80s instrumentation and melodicism in the track. Balancing fast-paced edits with a cinematic, dreamy soundscape that is pure sonic bliss, the video makes for a rare and highly pleasurable musical experience.
“The footage I’ve edited together is from a free online movie archive website. There was a section of home videos from around the 1940s which I found rather pleasant,” Harrison says.
“I love the flickering moments that appear then disappear. Felt like it captured the mood of this song very fittingly.”
With an element of wistfulness to it, the music from Fleeting Persuasion stands out from the rest, with tightly-crafted indie-rock structures walking a thin (but brilliant) line between mainstream and underground accessibility.
Tracks like ‘Night Arrives’, and previously singles ‘Eternal’ and ‘Passed Through’ ensure Fleeting Persuasion has strong potential to shine through today’s cluttered musical jungle and we are here for it.
Stream the single on Spotify here or via Bandcamp from Wednesday, June 1 2022 and keep up with the latest from Fleeting Persuasion here.
