Nation of Language – I’m Not Ready for the Change

Nation of Language delivers ‘I’m Not Ready for the Change’, their latest offering, arrives as their Sub Pop debut single, setting the stage for September’s Dance Called Memory album.

The song emerges from a haze of processed synths and deliberate imperfection. Ian Richard Devaney’s vocals drift through the mix like someone trying to convince everything will work out fine while the ground shifts beneath their feet. Producer Nick Millhiser returns to help craft textures that deliberately reject polish in favour of humanity.

Devaney has been wrestling with electronic music philosophy, choosing Brian Eno’s humanist approach over Kraftwerk’s mechanical precision. In an era where AI threatens to replace human creators, this feels like taking a stand with a synthesizer. The band sampled chopped drum breaks and ran percussion through synthesizers, creating sonic landscapes referencing early-2000s electronics and shoegaze textures without surrendering their core identity.

This marks their fourth album and represents another step away from icy synthpop toward something messier and more lived-in. The production embraces imperfection as a feature rather than a bug, letting cracks show through the digital facade. It’s music for people who’ve accepted that change happens whether you’re ready or not, but still aren’t thrilled about the timing.

Dance Called Memory promises more of this carefully constructed emotional honesty when it arrives in September.