Over the past three months, Halifax indie rockers Nap Eyes have released the new songs “Feline Race Wave,” “Ice Grass Underpass,” and “Demons.” If you thought that Nap Eyes were building up to the release of something bigger, you would be right. Today, Nap Eyes announced plans for The Neon Gate, their follow-up to the 2020 LP Snapshot Of A Beginner.

All three of those recent Nap Eyes tracks are on The Neon Gate, and so is the bucolic, poetic new track “Passageway.” Here’s how bandleader Nigel Chapman explains the song:

I had the last verse of this song written for a long time, along with a bunch of earlier verses that I didn’t like as much that I eventually discarded. One quiet day when I was not doing too much of anything, I started to come up with the lyrics of the earlier verses — just in my head without an instrument or speaking them out loud, which is unusual for me. So the song was generated by this out-of-the-ordinary writing method, but I think this resulted in a song that is pretty different from anything else I’ve written to date.

Below, listen to “Passageway” and check out the new LP’s tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Eight Tired Starlings”
02 “Dark Mystery Enigma Bird”
03 “Demons”
04 “Feline Wave Rac”
05 “Tangent Dissolve”
06 “Ice Grass Underpass”
07 “Passageway”
08 “I See Phantoms Of Hatred And Of The Heart’s Fullness And Of The Coming Emptiness”
09 “Isolation”

The Neon Gate is out 10/18 on Paper Bag/Paradise Of Bachelors.