Nights to Forget is a departure from the sound of her debut in favour of blending traditional singer-songwriter structures with more electronic elements.

Nights to Forget is the second album by Glasgow-based Martha Ffion. The follow-up to her debut Sunday Best released in 2018, itself long listed for the ‘Scottish Album of the Year’, Nights to Forget is a departure from the sound of her debut in favour of blending traditional singer-songwriter structures with more electronic elements. Produced by Dave Frazer and recorded out of his home studio in Glasgow, Nights to Forget is an ambitious record which is more often than not a victim of its own scope and depth. 

On first listen the album seems to embrace the tried and tested slacker indie pop vibe. With laidback vocals, intertwining guitar, straightforward structures, and a mellow sound it seems destined to repeat the formula. Digging a little deeper though, we find Ffion pushing the boundaries through the production a little more. With an arpeggiated synth here, or some multiple layers of guitars there, it soon becomes apparent that this record has a lot more depth to explore and a wider sonic palette than it initially hinted. This is a good incentive for the listener to return and explore these sonic components upon re-listen.  

‘After the Fact’ brings skittish off-kilter drums and guitar before slowly adding more and more individual guitar elements to latch onto until we get an almost dizzying array of multiple twitchy guitars towards the climax. Or on ‘Want You to Know’ which, rather than simply marching along with its overbearing drum beat, adds in multiple layers of synths, harpsichords, guitars lurking underneath for the listener to pick out. 

However, whilst it is no bad thing to experiment with pushing the production, it feels too overwrought in the context of the album and for the songs presented. There is the impression throughout of perhaps a little self consciousness when presenting the songs, possibly in part due to the fact that a lot of them are fairly similar in structure and to compensate, Ffion & Frazer have thrown the kitchen sink at a lot of the music before then drowning it in reverb. The overall effect of this leads to a muddier affair in the mix with multiple elements fighting against each other to be at the forefront of the listeners attention.

On “Lost in the Crowd”  it starts off as a tender sounding piano led ballad but, over the course of its two and a half minute run time, there is an arpeggiated synth which sticks out jarringly, multiple synth layers, more drums right at the forefront of the mix, and drums strikes panning from left to right; and all of this is before we come into the outro of the song. Like with a lot of the album, it feels like as soon as an element is introduced, it’s whisked away or contending with another new element. Meanwhile, one feels it would benefit to just give some of these ideas a little more room to breathe and flourish. A lot of the individual elements are not inherently bad. They feel rushed as though Ffion is desperate to get as much in as possible, get through the track, and move onto the next song. It seems to lack any subtlety in the mix and what feels like it should be a slow rumination of a song quickly loses any intimacy and connection with the listener. 

The latter half of the album seems more restrained, trimming some of the fat. “Rosaline” has a nice folky tinge and for a short while is fairly delicate, though we end up with another excessive instrumentation as it builds and then falls into the outro.  “Going Out In Style’ and the following track “Universe” definitely stand out as the two highlights of the album where Ffion hits the nail on the head. Whilst still sonically varied, the depth created on ‘Universe’ works a lot better without all the spaces between clogged by another synth line or yet more excessive guitar overdubs. This way the song plays out in a much more melancholic and meaningful way. When the songs are allowed to be exposed for what they are, as opposed to filled with more and more layers, they stand out as they deserve.

Following on from this, “Walked Me Home” continues with the exploration of the albums electronic influences, with its heavily processed kick drums for ear candy, and works quite well as a nice minimalistic pop song. Nonetheless, it still falls victim to overproduction (surprise surprise) with added reverse reverb vocals but thankfully these don't detract much. We then head into album closer ‘Don’t Let Me Go’: a 50s-esque R&B ballad with some unconventional synths and percussion. While nice enough, it ends up being fairly forgettable and a sadly limp ending for the album.

Nights to Forget is by no means a bad album. It has solid songwriting on it, Martha Ffion’s vocals are lovely if perhaps a bit timid, there’s some interesting guitar, and seriously fun moments throughout. Where it unfortunately falls short is its scale and the ambitious range of sounds employed which end up suffocating a lot of the tracks, leading it to become messy in places. Ffion and Frazer seem to have, for the most part, subscribed to the notion that more is definitely more. Perhaps, in future, with a more deft approach in the production, or someone suggesting that they didn’t need another layer of vague synth padding with the faders up to maximum on every channel, we might see a very good album.