As the weather gets colder and the year comes to a close, we’re met with the warm hue of an earlier sunset, often sooner than some would like.
It’s not hard to understand why some people are displeased with the longer periods of darkness that come with the final months of the year. No student wants to go to their first class at four in the afternoon when the sun has already finished its shortened, holiday shift.
Nevertheless, in trying situations it is important to always make the most of what you have before you. In this case, the darker evenings can be a time for romantic scenarios, enjoying brisk nighttime walks or cozying up under several blankets with a warm beverage.
In the spirit of these darker days, below is a list of seven albums that encapsulate the complicated feelings of late nights. Whether you’re looking for something higher energy or slow and sentimental, some music is just better experienced under the dark blanket of a night sky.
Dummy — Portishead (1993)
The godfather of everything trip hop, Dummy is an iconic member of the evolutionary merging of ‘90s rock and electronic music from one of the U.K.’s greatest bands. The album and band would not be the same without the uniquely recognizable voice of Beth Gibbons. Her vocals play many roles throughout the album, from ominous harbinger on “Wandering Star,” melancholy protagonist of “Roads,” and sultry voice of “Glory Box,” the James Bond theme that never was. Dummy is far and away the band’s most accessible collection of songs from their three albums, but that does not detract from the brooding, oftentimes scary turns it takes. You’ll never forget the first time you hear Dummy, an album so perfectly executed and singular in its sound that it forever cements itself in listeners’ minds. When talking about albums for late nights it would be impossible not to mention this album, the crown jewel of this list.
Mezzanine — Massive Attack (1998)
An evolution of early trip hop, Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is utterly immune to aging. Released in 1998, its crisp mixing sounds far beyond its time, if not timeless altogether. Its creeping and crawling feeling has never quite been replicated elsewhere, even within the group’s own discography. The album opens with the gradual bass building in “Angel,” a slow-moving but explosive introduction to Mezzanine’s hazy, nocturnal world full of danger and excitement. “Risingson” and “Inertia Creeps” paint the scene of a grimy, smoke-filled lounge, where long hallways lead to new rooms. “Teardrop” stands out from the surrounding tracks as a jolt of energy, sounding brighter and less engulfed by the album’s hypnotic darkness. Sung by Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, this track is a high peak in trip hop history.
Mezzanine is consistently good front to back, each song a unique character fitting into the world it builds.
Night Drive — Chromatics (2007)
With a title like that, it’s easy to understand why this album would make it on this list. The synthwave group Chromatics captures the feeling of driving at night like nothing else on their fittingly titled Night Drive. The album introduces its narrative through a telephone call between the protagonist and her boyfriend as she’s leaving a nightclub, choosing to go for a drive before visiting him. The title track paints the scene as the narrator begins her venture into the night, the bass riff repeating like the coming and going of lights illuminating a highway. The album’s centrepiece is a cover of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” The band has taken an iconic piece of music and made it their own, and while it may not reach the same height as the legendary original, it accomplishes something entirely different, recontextualizing itself musically and applying its messages to the album’s narrative.
What makes Night Drive so captivating is the variety in how its songs are structured. Lyrics play a stronger role in the beginning tracks, but the second side features more instrumental, abstract cuts to amplify the dreamlike atmosphere of driving late at night. The 15-minute “Tick of the Clock” forces listeners to sit with the repetition of a skeletal instrumental, placing them into the narrator’s position until they themselves feel like the protagonist of the story. Night Drive’s variety is bound to garner different tastes in listeners, but one cannot deny its unparalleled commitment to a late-night atmosphere.
Floating Into the Night — Julee Cruise (1989)
Another album with a fitting title given the music therein, Floating Into the Night sonically achieves exactly what its title says. This record sounds elevated, offering a bird’s eye view of the world below. Cruise’s vocals serve as a companion to compositions and lyrics by Angelo Badalamenti for the soundtrack of David Lynch-directed T.V. series Twin Peaks. Even removed from its filmic context, Floating Into the Night holds its own as an independent album. The iconic bass plucks on “Falling” will call listeners back to the show’s opening theme, but Cruise’s angelic vocals offer a new layer to the story making it her own. It’s a dream pop classic and a deeply evocative listen. Cruise is the vocal embodiment to the being on the cover artwork: floating above earthly listeners, a nightingale calling its woes out into the endless black of the night sky, echoing from the stars down to the world below.
But don’t be fooled. While undeniably soothing at numerous points, this is still a companion to Twin Peaks. Various elements in the songs are outright creepy and will catch listeners off guard in their abrupt shifts, using tension to keep the album unpredictable and engaging.
Stardust — Willie Nelson (1978)
Country music legend Willie Nelson has had a prolific career with 102 studio albums under his belt. Stardust, perhaps one of his more well-known and acclaimed LPs, is a moment of glimmering late-night magic. Its 10 tracks are all entirely covers of traditional American classics, including “Stardust,” “Georgia On My Mind” and “Unchained Melody.” Nelson has certainly flexed his songwriting capabilities on his other albums, but Stardust demonstrates his knack for making any song his own, telling it with a soulfulness that would make listeners think he was their original writer.
The tranquil soundscapes of Stardust glide into your ears. It’s an essential soundtrack for pensive-inducing, humid summer nights around a campfire, basking in its warmth and flickering glow. The soothing guitar plucks and Nelson’s voice make you nostalgic for the present moment, as though you’re anticipating the memories you’ll associate with the music. Stardust is an essential for late nights and American country music altogether.
Loud City Song — Julia Holter (2013)
Multi-talented singer-songwriter Julia Holter cannot be confined to the description of just the S&S genre. Broadly speaking, her work could fall under chamber and art pop, but with each release she challenges how these genres are understood. Her albums are distinct from one another and bursting with personality.
2013’s Loud City Song is a soundtrack to the ebb and flow of late-night passions. It’s distinctly urban in spirit, encapsulating the restless introspection of life in the city. However, musically it’s often earthy, like planting your feet in cool soil or soaking in the sting of cold waves washing around your ankles. This comparison could be summarized by the jazzy, slightly unsettling “In the Green Wild.” The album’s narrator has literally or metaphorically ventured outside the city, losing themselves in the natural processes around them as if each blade of grass is humming a melody.
Holter creates an ecosystem of sounds that capture the many voices and stories that make up city life. The auditory traffic from this life can make your own inner voice difficult to hear in these times, as explored in the lyrics and production of “Horns Surrounding Me.”
There’s a deep romanticism to the album too, an everyday intimacy in living amongst people and watching their lives pass around you, perhaps best felt on the tender “This is a True Heart.” Loud City Song is a love letter to the quiet people watchers of the world, and those blurred, passing faces we assess for ten seconds before they slip from our memory. But for those ten seconds, we feel a closeness to them. These unknown lives cascading as rivers around us are a thing of wonder to Holter, and late-night walks under the orange hue of streetlights are an ideal time to indulge in such reflections.
Here in the Pitch — Jessica Pratt (2024)
Los Angeles folk singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt has a voice from the past, often singing underneath a veil of reverb or record static. Through her enchanting vocals, she becomes the architect of psychedelic dreamscapes from a bygone time. Her songwriting feels like flipping through a stranger’s photo album, glancing at memories that don’t belong to you but that you feel connected to by witnessing another life lived. While any of her albums could fit the bill for this list, it would be unfair to ignore the nocturnal allure of her most recent release Here in the Pitch, her finest work to date.
The grandeur of the opening track “Life Is” sets the scene for a spacey journey. Pratt sings like a wise sage, expressing an awareness of time and the distance between two points akin to the fluctuating closeness of two individuals. The magnetic final track “The Last Year” bookends the first track’s themes, ending on a hopeful note and amplifying all the colours that make up the night.
The album may be over, but the nighttime it eases listeners into doesn’t feel as such. Pratt leaves you to sit with the resonance of her comments on time, gently nudging you to understand your place between one point in time and another, and how to move forward from here.
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Of course, there are numerous other picks that did not make this list, and perhaps everyone has their own selection of late-night music defined by their own experiences and memories. Although it’s inherently subjective, as all music is, these albums embody the feeling of late nights and generally dark periods. Spanning different genres, they share the quality of being best enjoyed when the world goes dark and quiet, when the time is ours alone, without disturbance or any agenda but our own.