Album Review: The Night Flight Orchestra – Give Us The Moon

Update – don’t miss our interview with Björn Strid!

My experience of The Night Flight Orchestra is mainly limited to slightly more than one appearance at Bloodstock. They headlined the Sophie stage back in 2022, but I couldn’t stay for the whole set and left wanting more. Thankfully they were back in 2024 and had an absolute party on the Ronnie James Dio stage. Fast forward to December and their new (7tth!) album dropped into our mailbox for review.

Following the band’s “flight” motif, the intro track is a short airline call namechecking the band before “Stratus” throws us right into the air with a song that absolutely sums the band up. I think I’ve described them in the past as something like “if ABBA did hard rock” and it’s a joyous combination. I mean, if you come from Sweden I think you legally have to cite ABBA as a musical influence, regardless of what you play.

NFO are an eight-piece and it’s pleasing to see them all listed in the blurb as band . It’s all too common to see the core musicians credited with others almost ed off with a quick “oh, and we have some people on backing vocals” comment. Songs like “Shooting Velvet” simply wouldn’t sound as good as they do without the vocal talents of Anna Brygard and Åsa Lundman. It’s an awesome track to start with, but the production and full, rich sound fleshed out with their twin chorus… absolutely nailed, and probably my favourite of the dozen we have here.

While each song is very much an individual piece, the band do get to strut their stuff more obviously in places. “Like The Beating Of A Heart” opens with a synth/keyboard hit not unlike Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” and the intro very much belongs to John Lönnmyr before the drums of Jonas Källsbäck and bass of Sharlee D’Angelo kick in and it develops a great pop feel, harking back to the previously mentioned legendary Swedish foursome.

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Björn Strid’s vocals are, as always, on point. I’ve always been a fan of his in Soilwork and I love that his “side project” is such a massive sidestep. It really puts to rest the fact that nobody needs to have “guilty secrets” when it comes to music. Like what you like! The songs on this new album are fairly varied and he happily bounces from anthemic (“Way To Spend The Night”) to emotional (“Paloma”) to rocky (“Cosmic Tide”) with ease, with the lyrics always perfectly clear. He’s also a superb frontman when the band are playing live, so do keep an eye out for the tour (which, annoyingly, is only hitting London in the UK).

While it’s always easy to say that there isn’t a bad track on an album, it’s very much true of Give Us The Moon. There are songs I like more (much more) than others, but that’s partially due to the variety. Some just hit the styles that are more likely to get my gooses pimpling, and they’re done well so I’m really into those ones. But there’s not a song on the album that I haven’t enjoyed listening to.

I know The Night Flight Orchestra weren’t for everyone at Bloodstock. I’ve had that argument with the “TROO METTUL” bunch on the forum, but one look at the hundreds of others with smiles on their faces, dancing in the sunshine to forty minutes of pop-infused hard rock says, to me at least, that there’s always some room for light relief. Give Us The Moon is a beautiful modern take on the music I grew up with.

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Give Us The Moon is out on January 31st

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Header image: Linda Florin

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