FOUR ALBUMS INTO a music career built on reviving the trappings of traditional, old-time rave-up rock 'n' roll, JD McPherson gave himself one directive for the songs that ended up on his latest album, Nite Owls.

“I love guitar music, and I love busy guitar players, but my favorite players have either a thing that they’ve invented or keep it pretty sparse, like Bo Diddley, Daniel Ash [of Love and Rockets and Bauhaus] and Ricky Wilson from the B-52s,” he says. “I love when the guitar is distilled down and focuses on a sound.”

The particular sound in McPherson’s head as he set out to make Nite Owls, his “surf-noir” record, was based around a motif of single-note riffs with a generous helping of spring reverb. “How many sort of different ideas can you convey with that being the glue that holds everything together? In my mind, that was obviously surf guitar, and Duane Eddy and [Ennio] Morricone spaghetti Western soundtracks, and even a wee bit of Depeche Mode – Martin Gore and the big Gretsch hollow-body stuff,” he says.

But much to his frustration, it took three tries to finally get Nite Owls right.

McPherson first began recording the songs pre-pandemic, but when Covid restrictions and life changes splintered his longtime band, he was left at square one. “The pandemic happened and everybody started to rethink their priorities in life,” he says. “Restaurants closed down, bands broke up — that’s a pretty universal story. But it happened, and I was sitting with this unfinished thing.”