Night Moves’ John Pelant on the band’s ‘Canned Heat meets Motown meets The Spinners on acid’ sound

Night Moves. // Courtesy Night Moves

Minneapolis-based Night Moves’ latest single “Fallacy Actually” embodies their psychedelic energy balanced against their folk twang, all polished off with indie appeal.

“I wanted it to have a NOVA, UFO abduction, backroom Estonian roller rink discotheque kind of vibe,” says John Pelant, who handles vocals, guitar, keys, and songwriting for the band. “I love the soft flute–makes me think of Canned Heat meets Motown meets The Spinners on acid.”

Night Moves plays the recordBar here on March 12, as they head out on a mini-tour en route to SXSW—their first real run of shows since the pandemic began. Night Moves are a delight to see live: their music envelops you and gently pulls you along on a journey through their layered, cinematic, cosmic country.

The band has put out three full-length albums on Domino Records, the last of which was Can You Really Find Me in 2019. The last couple years have provided ample time for writing more music, especially compared to the busyness of pre-pandemic life.

“When there’s not a pandemic, you know, it’s like I’ve got shit to do, and I’ve got places to be, and you feel the pressure of just life,” says Pelant. “And when you’re sitting alone in your room trying to write something or make a demo, you’re not fully there. Or you have the anxiety of ‘I should be out enjoying the summer day,’ rather than being stuck in my dingy room with all the curtains pulled, listening to this melody on a loop.”

The isolation of the pandemic eliminated so many of those other variables, allowing more time to hide out and write songs.

Pelant continues, “So I was like this is great, this is fucking great, I have nothing but time, and I feel no pressure because we’re going to be here in another month and in another month it’s gonna be the same thing, so fuck it.” And so he’s been writing away, building up new material.

Night Moves at Riot Room, July 2019. // Photo by Emily Cox

Their next single, “Vulnerable Hours,” will be hitting the figurative airwaves right as they set out on this tour. Like many things these days, it started with a podcast. “There’s this podcast called Song Confessional,” says Pelant, “And at the beginning of the pandemic I reached out and said ‘Hey, I want to do one of these, will you send me like a fucked up confession?’”

The NPR podcast receives confessions from listeners, then gives them to songwriters to turn into musical material.

“I didn’t really mean for it to go anywhere, but it kind of ended up snowballed into this thing, ‘Alright let’s go into the studio and actually record this song, and hey, while we’re in there let’s record all these other songs,’” says Pelant.

After that trip to Pachyderm Studios with producer John Agnello (who has worked with acts like Kurt Vile, Dinosaur Jr, and Sonic Youth), they ended up with about an EP’s worth of material, which will be parsed out to the public over the coming months. We’ll get little singles, as a treat.

“Whenever we put out a record, it’s like you tour for a couple months, and then that’s it, it’s over,” says Pelant. “’Well alright, I guess we’ll make another one, what the fuck.’ It’s like, we spent so much time making this thing and then it’s kinda done.”

So this year they are trying a new approach, building momentum around a series of singles released throughout the year.

Pelant looks forward to getting back into the rhythm of being on the road. Or, at least, he thinks he does.

“It’s kind of even been hard to think about what it was like in 2019 when we were touring behind a record, like fuck that feels like eons ago. That is to say, I think I miss touring. I can’t really remember it, you know,” says Pelant.

But he does recall the comfort of getting into a tour groove, compared to being on point for one-off shows: “After like three nights you get in the swing of things and that’s really nice. When you just go out for like one or two nights, it feels really heavy. But I feel like there’s a lightness that comes after a while. You hit your stride, and everyone kind of hits their stride.”

Night Moves plays RecordBar with Various Blonde on Saturday, March 12. Details on that show here.