Nestor releases its EP Nov. 9 at the soon-to-be-renamed Winnebago.
Madison synth-rock ensemble Nester’s new EP, Scale the Walls, is a five-track sound garden. Ponderous at times, jagged in others, it’s the kind of music that could propel a freaky scene in a David Lynch film.
There’s the bone of a click track inside the music. Sparse, nearly sterile; not bereft of emotion but free of impurities. Meghan Hamilton’s warm voice triggers a stimulating friction against the band’s modern instrumental play. Nester combines the burnished wood tones of The Head and the Heart with the synthetic, Formica feel of Radiohead.
Core members Hamilton and lead guitarist Riki Sjachrani met at a Madison cafe in 2008. Next came Matt Voll (bass) and Jeff Carlson (synth, vocals) who were college classmates at UW-Whitewater. The band’s newest addition is drummer Ginny Kincaid, who has been with Nester since 2016.
Scale the Walls is the band’s third studio release. The musicians worked under the supervision of Landon Arkens, who recorded, mixed, and mastered the album at Madison’s prolific Blast House Studios. Arkens deserves big credit for helping unify the band’s unique artificial-meets-natural-sound.
Then there are the lyrics. While members compose the music together, Hamilton writes the words. She’s a post-millennial Carl Sandburg, where going caving and writing code meet within the course of a few couplets.
The EP’s sexiest track is a driving, teasing love song that should be a blast to see live when Nester plays the release show on Nov. 9 at the soon-to-be-renamed Winnebago. Again, there’s friction, but this time from Hamilton’s words in “Fold”:
There’s you and me.
There’s you and me with lasers.
There’s you and me.
There’s you and me with plans.
This band knows how to make a moody song rock.
The members of Nester are known around town for forming incarnations of other bands in tribute shows. Kincaid plays with the Fleetwood Mac tribute Gold Dust Women, and Kincaid and Hamilton have performed as the Indigo Girls. Scale the Walls goes a long way toward securing Nester’s own brand.
[Editor's note: We corrected this version of the story to reflect the fact that Nester's release party is on Nov. 9, not Nov. 8.]
