Nurses

Sometime in the past decade, Nurses moved from Idaho to Portland. Now based in a town that's in no short supply of chamber-pop bands both great and mediocre, Nurses has successfully taken some of that style and transformed it into something much more idiosyncratic. At least that's the impression you'll...

By Tom Murphy

January 11, 2012

Audio By Carbonatix

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Sometime in the past decade, Nurses moved from Idaho to Portland. Now based in a town that's in no short supply of chamber-pop bands both great and mediocre, Nurses has successfully taken some of that style and transformed it into something much more idiosyncratic. At least that's the impression you'll get from listening to the band's 2011 album, Dracula. Although Aaron Chapman doesn't have a conventionally good singing style, his voice — part Daniel Johnston, part cat, part cartoon character — helps the music sound like a kids' book written about adult subjects brought to life. At once tender and haunted, otherworldly and organic, Nurses proves that you can have an eccentric stage presence and toss aside musical conventions that get in the way of expressing the sounds in your head and still remain accessible.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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Twitter: @simianthinker