On Aug. 4, Nurses released their much awaited debut album, Apple’s Acre, to an eager community of Portlanders. Right now, though, the band is ready for a break.
“We have two weeks of Portland summer [and] then we’re gone for three months,” says lead singer Aaron Chapman. “So [our] immediate plans are to totally indulge in summertime activities.”
Chapman and bandmate John Bowers started out as kids in Idaho Falls, both with a strong musical background. The two were soon introduced and became fast friends, later moving to California together, where they played and wrote music together for a few years. Percussionist James Mitchell later joined on when the pair moved up to Portland after living in a van in Chicago and then later going back to Idaho for a bit.
“That experience totally exhausted us,” says Chapman. “We felt super unhealthy in every way so we went home to Idaho to visit family. That’s where we started recording our record, and then we decided to move to Portland on a whim.”
Apple’s Acre has been a long time coming. It is the end result of several years of work—the band hadn’t always planned on anyone ever hearing its songs.
“When we started recording, we didn’t think anyone was necessarily going to hear the songs, we just started recording for fun, but also to get these ideas out of our brains,” says Chapman. “I think whenever you make music you know in the back of your head someone might hear it, but we really recorded it without an audience in mind, which to me makes it both honest and completely vulnerable.”
This honest quality is evident in the music. In a town rife with folk music, Nurses stand out in Portland as unique, unconventional and refreshingly simple. They have a quaint, vintage feel in their sound, meshing lo-fi acoustics with more up-to-date electronics and a vast array of other mysterious sounds. The end result is a warm, lush soundscape that completely envelops the listener.
Nurses are set to begin touring extensively in support of their new album, but will possibly be back in the studio working on new material for another album after they return.
“We’re planning on touring a lot, but this winter we’ll be home and back to work on new material and probably recording a new project,” says Chapman. “We’ve got lots of ideas and songs we’re excited about. We’d all really love to live in the woods for a few months and write and record.”