What can we say about 9 o’clock Nasty that we haven’t already said? Well… we could start with… they’ve got another single out! Nothing, if not prolific, 9 o’clock Nasty release their latest single, Rise Up, today (10 December 2022) and we here at the Send Me Your Ears studio have been taking a listen.
9 o’clock Nasty have an unnerving ability to reinvent themselves between singles. Are they the Madonna of the 2020s? We’ve likened previous singles to Pink Floyd, pop-punk, garage, and unapologetically loud, brash and shouty. More than any other band, 9 o’clock Nasty have kept us on our toes this year.
Their latest single, Rise Up, reminded us at the start of 4 Non Blonde’s, What’s Up. With crunching guitar strums and a shaker setting the pace, this song already felt catchy before the vocals even joined the mix.
The vocal melody is simple. It’s repetitive and at times it is copied by an electric guitar line. There is just a touch of organ in the distance to fill out the sound for the final chorus- and round off the track nicely too.
The layered vocals in the choruses give this track a definite call to action feel and there’s something very stirring about their presence. “Rise Up, Rise Up”. This is not a song to sit still to. The familiarity of the call-to-action choruses gives the listener the confidence to join in. The song has a Lumineers (Ho Hey) feel to it. This is a song you’ll be singing to yourself for days after listening. Whether you want to or not!
Rise Up is a sonic earworm. A track that gets under your skin and one which we have no doubt we’ll be thinking about for a very long time.
As always, we love 9 o’clock Nasty’s sense of humour: “The world is objectively a worse place. A scarier place. An increasingly threatening and uncomfortable place. Where are all the protest songs? Why are all the handsome and interesting-looking rock stars not inciting the masses to resist? No, we don’t know either but we have decided to do something about it. We are now officially a BOY BAND and this is our love-pop-power-ballad of insurrection.”
Ideas from our ears
A few cuts in the vocal track at around 250Hz, 400Hz and 650Hz would help reduce some peaks and help it fit a little better in the mix. The low end could be thickened up with a couple of boosts around 60Hz and 150Hz as well as a low shelf boost set around 150Hz. A light compressor/limiter with maybe 4dB of make up gain would add to the warmth in the track too. As always, these are just some ideas from our ears.
We don’t know what they are, but we love them! 9 o’clock Nasty are a creative bunch of guys having the time of their lives creating highly inventive and original music.