B-Side Guys

The cold financial realities never make it into the songs. Sam Holmes works as a restaurant supervisor, Harry Phillips at an e-bike factory, and somehow between shifts they’ve created Exit Stage Left—ten exquisitely crafted tracks that sound like the work of artists with unlimited studio time and zero day jobs. Released November 14th on Roof Jump Records via Kartel Music Group, the album marks the UK indie-folk band’s transformation from four-piece to duo, slimming down to the essential songwriting core while expanding their sonic ambitions. Recording across Echo Zoo Studios, 123 Studios, and Fish Factory Studios with producer/engineer Caradog Jones, then mixing and mastering with D. James Goodwin (The National, Kevin Morby, Blitzen Trapper) in upstate New York, NIGHT FLIGHT have created their most complete statement yet.

The title draws from Shakespeare’s stage direction “Exit, pursued by a bear” from A Winter’s Tale, connecting the album’s themes of loss, time, humor, memory, and the redemptive power of uncomfortable honesty to centuries-old dramatic tradition. That literary sensibility permeates the songwriting—Holmes and Phillips write with the care of people who understand words matter as much as melodies, that craft requires attention most artists won’t sustain. Their influences span The Band to Big Star, Nick Drake to Elliott Smith, tied together with Randy Newman’s wry humor as they chronicle navigating from twenties into thirties, documenting how love and life compound into complications that simple songs can’t address.

“Cold To The Touch” opens the album establishing NIGHT FLIGHT’s particular gift for balancing refined songwriting with lavish instrumentation while maintaining deft touch. Notion Magazine called them “the UK’s answer to Fleet Foxes,” and that comparison clarifies their approach—they build dense arrangements that never feel cluttered, harmonies that enhance rather than overwhelm. The production throughout allows each instrument space to contribute meaningfully, understanding that more doesn’t automatically mean better.

“Alimony” arrived as a single with stunning live performance video from Fish Factory Studios, capturing the duo’s ability to translate studio complexity into immediate performance. The track addresses relationship dissolution through financial lens, documenting how love’s end gets mediated through lawyers and payments, romance reduced to contractual obligations. The song demonstrates NIGHT FLIGHT’s comfort with darker subject matter, their willingness to examine how adulthood transforms even endings into administrative hassles.

“Outside” and “No Pressure” continue exploring the album’s central concerns—how to maintain connection when circumstances pull you apart, how to be honest when dishonesty feels safer. The follow-up to 2023’s Songs From Echo Zoo (which earned 8/10 from Americana UK for its “beautiful vocals contrast against folk-laden indie to make an album of meaning that showcases a band with a true identity”), Exit Stage Left builds on that promise while pushing into new territory enabled by the duo configuration.

“Forget You” functions as a fraught but dreamy rumination, anxiety simmering underneath melody’s psychedelic rise and fall. Featuring backing vocals from Hohnen Ford, the track documents the effort required to forget and move on, how moving forward often means actively erasing what you’d rather remember. The production here showcases Goodwin’s mixing work—every element occupies precise placement in the stereo field, creating dimension that rewards attentive listening without requiring audiophile equipment to appreciate.

“A Song Upon The Window” and “Awful Mess” maintain the album’s careful balance between accessibility and ambition. NIGHT FLIGHT never sacrifices substance for immediacy, trusting that listeners willing to engage will find rewards unavailable in simpler material. That confidence reflects the duo’s commitment—continuing the band has meant financial and personal sacrifices, but both remain compelled to create music, hooked on what Holmes describes as finding “somewhere that feels new and I don’t think it’s already been done.”

“Lucy” arrived as the album’s first single, bittersweet folk-inspired relaxation characterized by easy tempo and acoustic guitar playing descending progression. The restrained backdrop leaves room for sweet vocal harmonies and electric guitar interludes to truly shine, the kind of arrangement that sounds simple until you attempt replicating it. Reviews compared the track to Vampire Weekend meets Beach House, incorporating classic indie style with modern production mastery, while others heard Billie Marten’s influence in the song’s gentle execution.

The infectiously groovy production features insatiably chunky bass tone complementing traditional drumming patterns, paired with multiple guitar tracks—clean, overdriven, acoustic—creating textural variety that prevents the arrangement from feeling static. The vocal performance delivers sublime harmonies and inventive layering techniques, with slide guitar solo adding necessary grit to prevent the sweetness from becoming cloying. The chilled-out indie-rock vibe suggests permanent beach vacation, which feels deliberately ironic for a band whose members work day jobs to fund their artistic compulsions.

“The Hearse” near the album’s end introduces mortality into the thematic mix, documenting how contemplating death clarifies what matters about life. The track demonstrates NIGHT FLIGHT’s willingness to address subjects most indie-folk acts avoid, their understanding that meaningful art requires confronting rather than evading difficulty.

The title track “Exit Stage Left” closes the album providing the final exit its name promises. After ten tracks documenting love’s complications, memory’s distortions, and honesty’s painful necessity, this closing statement offers whatever resolution exists when none of life’s central questions admit easy answers. The Shakespeare connection resonates fully here—sometimes the only appropriate ending is to leave the stage pursued by whatever bears you’ve failed to outrun.

What makes Exit Stage Left remarkable isn’t just its craft—though the production, arrangements, and performances all demonstrate exceptional skill—but its existence against substantial odds. Making albums in 2025 as independent artists requires either financial resources or stubborn determination, and Holmes and Phillips clearly operate from the latter category. The album they’ve created doesn’t sound like compromise or limitation; it sounds like exactly what they intended, executed with the precision of artists who understand they might not get another chance to realize their vision this completely.

The duo’s decision to slim from four-piece to two-person core could have limited their scope, but instead it clarified their identity. These ten tracks feel cohesive in ways collaborative projects rarely achieve, unified by consistent sensibility that comes from two people who’ve spent years learning how to finish each other’s musical thoughts. Holmes describes the drive to follow something that feels new until it becomes finished song as “the best feeling of all,” and Exit Stage Left documents that feeling ten times over. The cold financial realities might make sustaining NIGHT FLIGHT impossible long-term, but for now they’ve captured something too good to abandon, compelled to create regardless of whether the industry infrastructure exists to support their work.