LA producer Danny Nogueiras has drummed for FIDLAR and worked on records by Together Pangea, so you might think you have a good idea of just how gloriously sloppy his solo project NO WIN might sound, and you’d be precisely incorrect. Where his erstwhile main gig rises from the gutter to go for broke, with NO WIN Nogueiras is playing with much more realistic stakes—which makes the end result that much more relatable, too.
Taking production cues from the hard-time shine of The Replacements circa Let It Be, he traces the arc of “Crooked Heart” as it moves in and out of shadows. At times, the song is bright and chippy and breathy, Teenage Fanclub for an early morning. But it’s defined by a blunted sense of longing that it shares with the best work of Gin Blossoms—an imminently relatable, largely indefinable sense of the very best things being placed just out of your reach.
That sentiment is echoed in the video by Ryan Baxley (Kate Nash, Bleached, Twin Peaks), which begins with a man passed out in front of a cocktail bar. The scene is bathed in an unfortunate LA twilight whose humidity seems like it’d fog up your computer screen. And when a nun arrives in a massive Cadillac convertible, it quickly becomes apparent that she’s not with the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Savor your Monday malaise and give it a spin below.
