The Eighty Six Seas

TThe Eighty Six Seas is the moniker of Nick Stevens, a Brooklyn-based artist who weaves a tapestry of indie rock, indie pop, indie folk and folktronica into a sound all his own. Decorated with sweeping strings and poetic stories, it’s a sound that has been shaped by influences as wide-ranging as The National, Frightened Rabbit, New Order, Belle and Sebastian, David Byrne, The Mountain Goats and Bon Iver.

Though Stevens’ musical career started as a solo folk artist in college, it was when he relocated to Brooklyn that he started developing his own unique sound. After being exposed to a wealth of musical sounds and styles that he hadn’t worked with before, he founded The Eighty Six Seas – an homage to the 1986 Boston Celtics, commonly referred to as “the 86 C’s”. His first release under the moniker, the EP This Is Just a Simple Song, hinted at what was to come. While sitting comfortable in the pop-folk genre, it introduced a subtle electronic influence.

The follow-up was a cover of The National’s I Need My Girl (featuring Elly Kace and Straight Pepper Diet) that ventured much deeper into electronica. The influences of that band can be felt in the ESS’s sound, but in contrast to Matt Berninger’s raspy, somewhat weary timbre, Stevens’ voice envelopes you like a warm hug and a gentle caress. Even the lyrics “wrist tied to a drain pipe, mouths taped so they won’t snipe” from his latest album are delivered in such a beautiful, melancholic tone that they feel like being robbed by James Taylor – or perhaps Jeff Buckley – and who would mind that?

The idea for the new album Scenes from an Art Heist came about when Stevens visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for the first time. The museum was the site of the largest art heist in history and, to this day, the frames that housed the stolen artwork hang on the walls as a reminder of what was lost. “The first time I saw the room where most of the artwork was stolen, I had a visceral reaction to the absence of the pieces,” recalls Stevens. “It was eerie and spooky. I remember thinking: ‘Pour one out for the frames. Imagine waking up one morning, thrown carelessly on the floor, with something beautiful torn out of you. Now you have to act normal, and hang on the wall, but you know that you’ve had something beautiful torn out of you and everyone can see it. You know there are others out there like you, but you can’t see them.”

It seemed like the perfect metaphor for a breakup, and it was the basis for the first song he wrote for the new album, called “Frames”. It also inspired him to create an album that would mimic the experience of walking through a gallery, where each piece is like a vignette with an individual statement to make but is also part of a collection that has a larger meaning.

Recording the songs, Stevens worked with a core group of collaborators consisting of David Anthony, Chris Anthony and David Knox, splitting their time between studios in Boston and Brooklyn.

This is an album that defies the pigeon-holing of algorithm, moving through and meshing multiple genres, including dance, indie rock, folk, EDM and country & western. Yet Stevens weaves a thread all the way through. There is an unmistakable pop sensibility to his writing, even when using unusual song structures, and the lyrics explore what causes someone to steal art and the void that is left when we are unable to interact with art.

In an increasingly homogenized music landscape, dominated by bite-size clips and singles, The Eighty Six Seas’ latest creation, is what albums were made for: a journey created by an artist with a vision. In fact, take away “he” from the title, and what does it spell? Scenes from an Artist.

Scenes from an Art Heist is indeed a piece of art in its truest form – and it should be listened to from beginning to end for the full experience.