Nap Eyes' metamorphic fifth long-player gathers together nine fascinating songs recorded in the four years since Snapshot of a Beginner. The Neon Gate contains classic themes (the uneasy interplay of physics and philosophy, wandering meditations, self-interrogations, openings of surreality, video games) but also signs of divergent impulses toward nonlinear abstraction and long-form improvised composition (resulting in their most discursive, deconstructed and delicate songs yet) and narrative and lyrical formality (including adaptations of thorny poems by Alexander Pushkin and W.B. Yeats), giving the impression that Nap Eyes have transformed as much as their understanding of what a song is, what it can do and where it might go.
