Good NightOwl is a project that has been going on for quite a while. This is their 15th (!!) full length album, the first of which came out in 2011. There are questions to be had as to whether each album listed is actually an album in the traditional sense or just a glorified experimental demo, but it’s an extremely impressive output nonetheless. It’s safe to say that Daniel Cupps is an experienced songwriter at this point. I dug into some of his older works: The first dozen or so albums seem to be progressive rock with a quirky experimental and psychedelic edge, starting out as instrumental, and adding vocals around 2015. Around 2019, he started pushing in an increasingly math pop direction with less and less psychedelic and conventional progressive rock elements, to the point where you’d barely recognize that this was the same “band” anymore compared to the earlier sound. And thus we land on Capital, his poppiest album yet.
I say poppy, but this record is by no means straightforward or easy to digest. The music of Good NightOwl is chock full with layers, polyrhythms, time signature changes, and other proggy nuggets that keep you intellectually engaged with the music. What I find most notable about Daniel’s approach is how rhythmic everything is. We have polyrhythms on the drums, a capella vocal layering, synths and guitars accentuating different parts of the rhythms; it’s a pretty mesmerizing combination, simultaneously catchy and complex as it throws you off balance with its rhythms. I’ve never heard anything quite like this. At best, I can point to The Dear Hunter for some superficial comparisons like vocal timbre and genres used, but this is far more bright and playful. From: https://theprogressivesubway.com/2023/08/28/review-good-nightowl-capital/
