Nightbus - Passenger (2025) Hi-Res

Manchester, UK. This is the existential and slightly sinister premise for Nightbus‘s debut album, Passenger’, it’s one more befitting of a horror movie or maybe a sci-fi series? Who is that alter ego they are talking about, and who is taking whom for a ride? Nightbus are vocalist Olive Rees and her partner in crime Jake Cottier. They were birthed in the hinterlands where Manchester’s city pulse meets Stockport’s outer realm where “blue pill meets red, ups become downs, and day merges with night.”

On Passenger they craft sleek songs built upon loops, synths and samples flecked with the influence of the 90s from New York Dance floors, ghostly 80s synth and new wave sounds, also mining the North West lineage of Factory Records and the Hacienda, there is a precision to this pulse that ripples with a bricolage that is all of these influences, but its a nowhere place that sounds resolutely like them. A soundscape imbued with humanity by Olive Rees whose weightless and beguiling vocals embody characters that brood with unspoken trauma, just beneath the surface. “That is what’s so great about horror; you can see through predictable patterns so when the unexpected occurs it’s more realistic and uncomfortable… I want to own the dark stuff!” she explains.

Rees embodies this “stuff” exploring themes like disassociation, co-dependency, and addiction before reaching its final destination – a glimmer of hope. ‘Angles Mortz’ fuses insistent dancefloor dancing, as liminal lights spin with basslines with a rhythm that echoes Peter Hook high end bass playing and is in lockstep with a beat that possesses a hint New Order‘s ‘Blue Monday’, yet it’s blanketed in a darker cloud, decorated with reverb-coated licks and oscillates with Rees’s enlivening, ghostly presence, reminding one of Poliça at their most evocative. It turns the song’s title that refers death angles on its head as it reflects upon kink and internalised shame reincarnated as pride.

Talking of New Order ‘Landslide’ hits that sweet spot where chiming guitars and glowing pop melodies bubble over, underpinned by throbbing basslines and two-stepping dancefloor beats, it’s an addictive song that is a Requiem for a Dream about the addiction of being in a band. It’s precise its mechanical it’s almost too clean and regimented at times there isn’t a note out of place, but it’s impressive for such a young band to produce a sound that’s so fully formed, so streamlined.

The enveloping ‘Ascension’ is underpinned by pulsing NYC-inspired club beats, dappling synth motifs and shimmering riffs. It skillfully intersects elements of synth pop, dream pop and commercial dance music, with a touch of cinematic electronica redolent of the Drive soundtrack. Rees’s intoxicating reverb-shrouded vocals wistfully conjure an end-of-the-party atmosphere, contemplating themes like death, suicide and legacy as the sun goes down, before releasing into a heady outro that echoes the sweat and movement of raves in abandoned warehouses.

‘The Void‘ is striking, exploring co-dependency and estranged relationships; with an enveloping beat and simmering distortion, allowing Rees voice is the star here, as she stares into the darkness as condescension rises on the walls. Sailing into beautiful tones, it’s dream pop with an edge that echoes the looping crush of Curve or, more recently, the work of I Break Horses. “This self-destructive side can be triggered at any moment, and you’ll experience life in a completely different light. It’s not about hiding that side, but if it were gone, what journey would it experience?”

‘Just A Kid’ from the band’s early incarnation, a house track layered with a sample from Robin Williams‘ Good Will Hunting speech, your just a kid you don’t understand yet. Ghostly closer ‘Blue in Grey’ rustles through the undergrowth for sanctuary with a visitation, a shadowy presence, tantalising just out of reach.

Technology creates disconnection from our loved ones and from our emotions, and it can overwhelm us with doomscrolling. Increasingly, people are giving over their very thought process to robots and ChatGPT as we rush headlong into an expansion of anti-intellectualism. Passenger asks what it means to be a passenger, who or what is driving are actions? What keeps us grounded, and what is lurking beneath the surface? Do we embrace it, process it or hide it away? With an expertly assembled and fully formed soundtrack that lurks with depth, it doesn’t offer answers; it is anchored with unknowable question marks, a haunting or a transformation, we choose the path or is it chosen for us? In the process, Nightbus takes us on a journey beyond the terrain to escape.