Almost every musician wants to make a record no one expects from them, and yet few working bands bottle this wanderlust in a way that both carries who they have been while staying true to their destination. Nicolay (from Grammy-nominated duo The Foreign Exchange) once again combines forces with jazz trio The Hot At Nights – Chris Boerner, Matt Douglas, and Nick Baglio – for another musical exploration since their 2012 tour of Shibuya Session EP. “Now The Coast Is Clear” captures all of the lessons of a band that has spent years expanding in experience, all while maintaining voracious appetites for new sounds, deeper style palates, and denser stories. You can hear influences from both sides of the aisle informing this track: the subtle jam heave of their Three Kids album (itself an amalgam of genre bends), flashes of all three of Nicolay’s City Lights sessions, the vast headspace of years of road life…it all simmers in this song. In a time when it’s easy to sink into the negativity of political malaise and nearly global despair, this single leans hard into contemplative hope, and the album that follows will surely stand as a testimony of necessary change to come. (Scott Woods)