Night Hymns just wants to be a fly on the wall in his new single and video Blue Bottle — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The Vancouver indie pop-rocker captures lightning in a bottle on his groove-heavy new cut, showcasing an uncanny ear for melody and a love for artists like The Beatles and Oasis.
“I am almost completely self-taught,” says Night Hymns, a singer-songwriter who goes by the single name Wei. “I picked up the guitar only to play rock ’n’ roll. If rock music never existed, I probably would not be making music right now. Call me the latter-day slacker rocker if you like, but the very idea of taking guitar lessons seems odd to me.”
Clearly, he doesn’t need them. Nor is he wanting for inspiration: Blue Bottle was inspired, interestingly enough, by a trip to California. “I am trying to paint my impression of San Francisco with music and words,” he says.
“But the joke is that I am actually writing about living like a happy fly. I got the idea in a café called Blue Bottle on a trip to San Francisco. The name just tickled me because it reminded me of a fat fly, probably because the café was not located in the tidiest corner of the city.”
It might not be the most straightforward subject for a song, but Wei insists he’s not trying to be esoteric. “Sitting around and strumming the guitar in Vancouver, I’m just writing to reach people who are into this kind of music. Don’t know where they are but they got to be somewhere. The music is so straightforward it’s hard to miss the point. I write about my wanderlust, about the places I’ve been to, and about the little things that tickled me. My influences come from both sides of the Atlantic, but mostly I just write the tunes off my head. It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but you haven’t heard this one before.”
You can hear it now. Watch the video for Blue Bottle above, check out more music from Night Hymns below, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
