“Was it meant to have a positive message?” echoes Em Foster on Nervus’ debut album ‘Permanent Rainbow’. “No, not really. I’m going to be brutally honest here, I became fixated on the idea that I was going to write this album and then kill myself.”
“I didn’t do that which is obviously great but it wasn’t meant to have a positive message at all,” they continue. Instead, it was meant to explain: “’Okay, this is why I’ve been the way I’ve been. Bye.’ That’s how it felt when I was writing it, but thankfully I got help and things are good now. Everything’s nice. It’s not really a positive album in that respect, which is a shame because I’d like to listen back to it and smile but unfortunately, that’s where I was at the time. It makes me happy now that I can hear it though and other people might hear it too.”
There’s a brutal honesty to the way ‘Permanent Rainbow’ sways between question and answer. Lush, beautiful landscapes wrap around frank admissions as Nervus look at letting go and moving forward. At times it’s glorious, swelling with victory and triumph. Elsewhere, the space makes you feel isolated to the point where you’re not entirely sure you should even be listening in. “That’s how it was written,” explains Em. “It wasn’t written as something I thought anyone would listen to if I’m totally honest. Essentially, it was an exercise in self-exploration.” Rather than the gap-year adventure of finding where you fit in the wider world, Em got sober. “I realised that alcoholism was a massive problem for me and I wanted to get to the root of what it was and to be honest with myself about it. I used these songs as a means to do that. I felt that at the time, the lyrics were the most blatant admissions of how I felt. Now I think they’re actually a little more opaque but the general message is apparent. “
The songs existed before the band did. Written with a single-minded determination to work things out before swelling with the addition of Karl Woods (bass) and Paul Etienne (keys), both of whom have been friends with Em for over a decade, as well as drummer Jack Kenny who has a longstanding musical relationship with them, ‘Permanent Rainbow’ is a fully realised force. “It felt like a complete body of work. We toyed with the idea of splitting it up and releasing it as EPs to help build a following but it didn’t feel like that. The way it was written and the way it came together, it was an album. We just thought, ‘Fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen?’ The worst that can happen is that people don’t listen to it, and that’s fine. It was written and made for us.”
Written in their bedroom and soundtracked by Into It. Over It., Death Cab For Cutie, Sleater-Kinney and a bunch of other stuff, ‘Permanent Rainbow’ isn’t so much an exercise in trying to write songs like other people, instead, it was about “trying out different things and challenging myself in terms of songwriting.” That challenge increased when the band started to bring the songs together. Practising until they occupied a zone where they were happy as a group, Nervus “were definitely a band before we went into the studio, rather than piecing the songs together in a studio and learning to play with each other afterwards. I think we sound like a band on the record,” offers Em. “It was a process. We recorded it once and I recorded it all myself. I engineered, mixed and mastered it and then dropped the hard drive after we recorded it. It was fucked from there on in. The hard drive was corrupted, it was completely irretrievable and we had to record the whole album again. It was great, just calling everyone up and saying, ‘Everything we’ve done is gone and we need to do it all again.’ They were chuffed.”
Em has been in bands, mostly punk but with the occasional foray into “a fun metalcore band, not a shit metalcore band”, since they were 13, but “Nervus does feel different. It feels much more exciting. Everything else I’ve done where I’ve been writing the songs, I’ve had this jokey, comic element to it as a defence mechanism. Nervus is definitely the most honest thing I’ve done and doing it with people who are my best friends, it definitely feels exciting. And people actually care. Nervus, to be totally honest, is a project that has no reason to stop. Nervus started as my solo project where I was unhappy with presenting myself as a man, so I decided that, if I presented myself as a band, or had a band name, I wouldn’t need to explain that. For me, Nervus is a project that will exist as long as I do, and the band feel the same way. We’ve already started working on the next album. We’ve got a lot of the demos together already. ‘Permanent Rainbow’ is part of an ongoing thing rather than one record than a load of nothingness.”
From the melancholy refrain of ‘Oh Joy’, through the heartbeat of ‘Bones’ until the all-out-bombast of ‘Bend/Break’, ‘Permanent Rainbow’ sounds empowering. There’s space to flourish and every moment of darkness is soon flooded with light. Positivity might have been the last thing on their mind but this record inspires. “That’s purely by accident but I’m glad that potentially people can take that away from it. I wouldn’t want it to be a doom and gloom thing really.”
“It’s been totally self-indulgent for me. Lyrically I’ve been sorting through all my shit and you can all listen but I hope people can take away from it what I did from the process itself. I hope it helps people who have been in a similar situation to me. I think there’s a lot you can take from it. You don’t have to be trans to take stuff away from the lyrics, you don’t need to have mental health issues to take stuff away from the record. I hope people take away the fact that things can be better and you can be honest with yourself. Obviously, it’s not going to be the easiest thing in the world to be brutally honest with yourself, but it is one of the most rewarding.”
Taken from the November issue of Upset, out now – order your copy here. Nervus’ album ‘Permanent Rainbow’ is out now.
