Release Date: 12 November 2025
Song Count: 11
Rating: 4.7/10
Description:
Today's spotlight lies on a pair of brothers from Dallas, Texas named Myles and Kyle Mendes who are making music under one name together, and landed on the radar after a song of theirs landed on the front page of Spotify's pseudo-random recommendations one fateful day. NITE, their self-titled album and fifth full release throughout their discography, is promised to be an embodiment of every style, feeling and sound that has been a consistent leading motif in the duo's music since their debut 13 years prior, and claims that the lyrics and melodies that could potentially resonate with the listeners were specifically "written with [them] in mind", so the expectations revolving around emotional resonance for the record are naturally elevated without even having listened to a singular note.
The sonical contents of NITE are what one could expect from a modern darkwave album: haunting synths, gritty electronic basslines and overall dramatic and dark sounding compositions take the stage, albeit with a more pop music type kick added to the mixture, and the lyrical contents hint towards moody themes and situations being shouted into the musical void. The vocals of the two brothers, finding themselves atop this potential ticket for musical success, however, don't quite live up to what is backing them, not just because of the weaker reverb or lack of an outright faraway sound, but also due to them simply having a hard time accurately conveying the emotions the songs are trying to express and invoke in the audience. A lot of the sung lines also fall short in this aim, either repeating themselves excessively rather than actually expanding verbally and thematically in a compelling manner, or just not striking the right words when they matter most.
Though a majority of the album is held back by these hurdles to reach its full artistic potential, there is one song that truly breaks through this mould - "Burn", the closing track and ironically the one track that led me to discover Nite in the first place, is also the track where the singing ends up being the most expressive and powerful, matching the equally strong energy radiated by the drums and the instrumental as a whole. It blows practically everything else in the record out of the water and showcases a glimpse of what the other otherwise rather played-out and uncaptivating tracks could have been with better vocal direction and execution.
While Nite is a two-man band that undoubtedly possesses more than enough talent and potential to create more tracks akin to the quality of "Burn" and even go beyond, their self-titled record unfortunately failed to lift up in a way that shows this, causing the general sound to be caught in a sort-of mousetrap of forgettability and mediocrity. Though it's clear in the production department that the Mendes Brothers did put plenty of passion into this project, it doesn't quite translate to it being visible in the final product due to the large mismatch looming over a grand majority of the tracks. The album is overall enjoyable to a limited degree, but Nite could very much go further than this with their music, and hopefully they shall do so in the near future.