Nightmare and the Cat Prepare for Release of Debut LP

This year, be on the lookout for the debut LP from Nightmare and the Cat.

The Los Angeles based rock five piece band formed in 2010, but Django Stewart and Sam Stewart, front man and guitarist of the band, have a music connection that goes way back to when they were young kids.

The brothers grew up in England and Sam spent his childhood watching his brother Django develop a love for James Brown. By the time he was 12 years old, Sam was a mastermind on guitar of the Nirvana songbook.

The brothers pursued different musical paths and performed in different bands until three years ago when Sam asked Django to join him for a songwriting session in Los Angeles.

"I was just so fucking happy when he said that," Django stated. "He came for 10 days and we wrote five songs," Sam added. "It was probably tour most prolific period", and with that, their new band was created.

Nightmare and the Cat was named after one of the brothers' favorite singles by Anthony Harwood, and soon turned into a five piece band with additions of Claire Avey (singer and multi-instrumentalist), Spike Phillips (drummer) and Scott Henson (bassist).

The group's go-to sound is a mix between Jeff Buckley's vocals and the Pixies' music.

So when the time came to follow up their debut self-titled EP with their first full-length album, Simple, they headed for uncharted territory.

They convinced producer Eric Valentine, who'd made one of their favorite albums (Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf) to record "Blackbird Smile" for them as a favor, and charmed him into doing the full LP. Then they got to work putting their gorgeously dramatic, atmospheric anthems to tape.

Sam calls grand opener "Simple" the album's "defining track" because "it sets the tone for the whole record and everything it's about." (As listeners will soon find out, Nightmare and the Cat's music is anything but simple.) "It's about relationships within your family, how people are trying to hide stuff but it always comes out in the end," Sam explains.

"Goodbye" is the group's version of a classic pop song inspired by '60s girl groups like the Ronettes and the Crystals.

Django says every time he sings the track's chorus -- "I've said goodbye so many times the words have lost all meaning / but I won't say it again if you keep me here believing" -- "I find a new meaning for it."

"Mae" shows off a folkier vibe more akin to the music Sam was making on his own before Nightmare and the Cat started up. "It's got that old shuffle beat and acoustic finger-picking," Sam says, plus "a very Fleetwood Mac-influenced chorus with the harmonies." The stompy sing-along "Alvarado" is sort of love letter to Echo Park, where the brothers have lived. Django sang the melody into his phone and shot it over to Sam, who mimicked the line on guitar, Hendrix-style.

"It's about opening your eyes to L.A., but the lyrics are kind of bittersweet," Django explains.

"We do that a lot in our music."
Dualities and dichotomies play a large role in the Stewarts' writing, partially because they are "total opposites," as Django puts it.

Born showman Django is the consummate performer onstage -- loose, alluring, otherworldly -- while Sam is the musical perfectionist, happy to spend days on end experimenting in the studio or composing the strings that adorn the lush, harmonic "Traditions." Sam is mostly inspired by Radiohead and the Beatles; while Django prefers the soulful singers he effortlessly recalls when he opens his mouth to sing, as well as brilliant writers like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

But together they -- and the full album -- add up to complexly beautiful whole.

"It's not a concept album, but sometimes when you listen to it from beginning to end there is kind of a narrative that carries through," Sam says, which may help listeners dig into the album's epic closer, "Breaking Down the Walls." It's built on two chords, and its power comes from layers of shifting melodies and rhythms -- and wine glasses, which the group managed to tune to the right key.

Writing music with a brother has its advantages -- "We can be brutally honest with each other, that's the main thing," Sam says -- but part of the challenge of making Simple was learning to open up their tight partnership to the rest of us.

"I feel like our music is so atmospheric and dreamy," Django muses, "it's almost like stepping into our own world."