rock / power-pop / pop

Unquiet Nights are a band with big ideas, big songs, and a big sound. With roots in Belfast and flavoured in London and Rome, the songs are ambitious and direct, whether you hear them live @ 10,000dB or on record. The music takes you back to a time when song-writing was king and Rock & Roll meant something.

Rising from the ashes of a previous Irish radio fixture, Unquiet Nights are centered on the songs of singer/guitarist Luke Mathers, the drum-work of Rodger Firmin, and the precision bass of John Rossi. It had always been about the songs, since long before anyone started taking notice. And since they started taking notice, the thing being noticed is still the songs.

21st Century Redemption Songs is the band’s maiden release, and is the result of 18 months of intensive recording and self-production. Songs from the album have gotten the band radio play in a long list of countries including UK national stations (Absolute Radio, Amazing Radio, BBC), as well as major music press (Under The Radar, G3, Music Now), sound track appearances on many TV and internet broadcasts (ESPN, Allisports, SurflineTV), as well as support slots at venues like Kasbah Club (Coventry) and Scala London (w/ Bloc Party), and headliners in their native Belfast (Auntie Annies, Pavilion). The band have also made appearances on Balcony TV Dublin, Guitar Shop TV, done numerous live sessions and interviews (Radio Galileo, Feile FM) and won five or six national competitions – all since September 2010, without having had an official release, and in the independent spirit the band identify with.

The songwriting on 21st Century Redemption Songs is forceful and ambitious, with about half of the album having featured on national radio, and stylistically it draws on the band’s love of Americana, British Invasion, Motown Soul, Outlaw Country, Delta Blues and Tom Petty. The lyrical themes are wide ranging and feature characters seeking redemption in modern life, struggling and refusing to give up, coming to terms with compromise, experiencing lust, love, hate, escapism and everything else Rock & Roll was designed to embody.

If 2011 saw the band begin to build a profile, in 2012 and with the release of the first album, the band intend to solidify and build on the reputation of that which is most essential to the band – the songs.