Nick Millevoi and the Desertion Trio Explore Bygone Era With “Taboo” (premiere)

Nick Millevoi and the Desertion Trio offer up a slice of their latest record, Twilight Time, via the new single “Taboo”. The new LP finds the group covering songs from the Platters, Santo and Johnny, and Gene Pitney, as well as exotica godfather Les Baxter and space age record producer Joe Meek. It was also inspired, in part by Wildwood, New Jersey’s shore town reputation and its well-preserved examples of mid-century architecture and design.

Millevoi explains, “I’ve been going to Wildwood for my entire life. It’s a unique place in its look and the way it always seems to be operating at the highest level of energy. I know it scares some people away, but it’s feels like home to me. I realized on our last record that a lot of those feelings are already lurking in the music I write. This time I decided to deal those ideas directly by tackling music from the 1950s and 1960s.”

Although the music on this current release was conceived well before the 35-year-old artist and bandleader, he concedes that it’s not all the foreign to him. “There’s a weird dichotomy in Wildwood where it exists as this nostalgic place, but also exists at the very edge of mainstream trends. When I was going to Wildwood as a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s, first learning to play guitar, I was hearing these old songs, which they play all over the town, played next to contemporary rock and hip-hop so I absorbed this music, these oldies, as if they were current to my own childhood.”

As for “Taboo”? It’s an impressive demonstration of restraint, a walk in the narrow line between twilight and darkness, an expression of frustration, of melancholy, of resolve and hope all at once. It’s the full expression of the cautious optimism of the past and the contemporary sense that hope is something of a bygone era. There’s a promise, too, that the Desertion Trio won’t leave you alone.