On one hand, he was, of course, thrilled to be back in front of his adoring fans. When he finally returned to the road this past summer with the Night Sweats, Rateliff says, it was a double-edged sword. And that’s exactly what they did during one stretch of the pandemic: “We made sure we were all safe and our bubble was pretty small.” “I bought my first home three years ago and the first thing I did was put a studio in the house.” In fact, Rateliff structured his entire house around the studio - namely so that his whole band could stay there and work on music. It was here, Rateliff says, that he gathered his Night Sweats bandmates in mid-2020 and began piecing together what became their 2021 LP, The Future. Lucky for Rateliff, a home studio at his Denver digs provided a necessary reprieve from the depressing reality of the situation. “It’s why I had looked forward to playing them in front of people because I feel like that’s part of the process of going through all of it.” Unfortunately for Rateliff, 10 shows into the tour, just as he says he was starting to slip into a groove, the tour was canceled. “I feel like part of the process of grieving or working through some of the things the songs on that record was dealing with about the loss of Richard was by playing the songs in front of people,” Rateliff explains. I hope it’s something people come back to… or at least was something people got a chance to listen to and it brought some semblance of solace.” “I knew it was going to take a backseat or get shelved at that point. “I thought the solo project was the best thing I had done so I was excited to share it with people,” he says of an LP that landed him a slot performing solo on Saturday Night Live this past March. Plus, he only played a handful of shows before touring behind it was canceled. Released less than one month before the world effectively shut down to COVID-19, Rateliff finds himself lamenting the fact that, at least as he sees it, the record may have been lost to time. Spend enough time talking to him though and the rough-and-rowdy singer will typically go back to what’s weighing him down. So that seems like a triumph in its own right.”Īdd in the fact that he followed up a poignant and beautiful solo album of singer-songwriter fare, 2020’s And It’s Still Alright, with arguably his best work yet - the Night Sweats’ third LP, The Future - and, at least on the surface, the road for Rateliff is looking smooth headed into the new year. “We didn’t even know when we’d be able to play shows again or play any kind of live music and then we spent a lot of the summer and fall back in outdoor venues. “Yeh, it feels like a success just to be able to tour again,” the singer and frontman for the typically bombastic Night Sweats says over the phone, reflecting on the past year. But even he can admit that following an 18-month stretch where a pandemic prevented him and pretty much every living musician from touring, heading back out on the road for some of 2021 was nothing short of a blessing. An instant classic of 11 songs, the album presents something more sustainable, interesting, and indeed open-a songwriter and band growing into bigger questions and sounds, into a future that allows them to remain recognizable but be so much more compelling than some denim-clad caricature.Nathaniel Rateliff isn’t the sort of guy who emotionally skews in either direction. The result is The Future, the third Night Sweats album but the first to capture this octet’s true depth and breadth. When Rateliff returned from his pandemic-truncated solo tour in March 2020, he struggled with the same question that vexed so many of us then-what now? Fortunately, he returned to his Colorado homestead and penned a set of songs that synthesized his introspection with his anthemic inclinations. To wit, is there any other modern act capable of revving up stadium crowds for The Rolling Stones while also appearing on Saturday Night Live and CMT Crossroads and at NPR’s Tiny Desk in short order? They’ve had hits, sure, but their combustible mix of soul and rock quickly cemented them as the rare generational band who balanced ecstatic live shows with engrossing and rich records. Since 2015, Rateliff has led his denim-clad, horn-flanked Night Sweats, supplying the zeal of a whiskey-chugging Pentecostal preacher to songs about this world’s shared woes. It took Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats less than five years to become one of the most recognizable new forces in contemporary rock ’n’ roll.
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