FERGUSON Releases Sonically Textured First Record ‘NEVER IN MY LIFE’

The Nashville-native ebbs and flows through an indie rock cyclone on latest release

There’s a certain familiarity to Ian Ferguson’s latest project Never in my Life, leaning into the psychedelic stylings of a ‘70s pipedream laced with a sunny California 2010 garage-rock modernity. Maybe it’s because it’s an album that’s trippy enough to feel like time travel, with tracks such as “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ALONE” taking you on a journey that feels like an LSD-induced musical whirlwind. The album disguises bubblegum pop with mind-bending guitar riffs and distorted synthetics that elevate the album from a “basic” pop record to something that’s so much more sonically interesting. 

PHOTOS BY ZAYNE ISOM

FERGUSON, alongside producer Will Brown, recorded NEVER IN MY LIFE in an attic and finished the record in the span of about a month. The two had known each other for a while, even  playing in a high school band called The Kingston Springs, named after FERGUSON’s hometown.

“We were a band for probably about five or six years, and we very fortunately got to tour a lot, and play festivals and stuff,” FERGUSON told Pleaser while sitting outside of a coffee shop in South Nashville. “I think we played our last show in 2012. We did it for a long time, but it just hit a point where we were hitting everything kind of hard.”

Since his departure from The Kingston Springs, FERGUSON has been working on music for his self-titled solo project, which gave him the space to play around with a more outgoing version of himself. There’s definitely a switch from playing in a band to becoming a solo artist, because you have to market yourself through a different perspective. For FERGUSON, he felt like through this project he tapped into himself at different stages of life, as he moved from being an introvert to finding more of himself as an extrovert. 

“I feel like what I’ve had to do being a solo artist is to relate to myself at different ages,” FERGUSON said. “There were certain ages where, like, I was in sixth grade and really shy versus being in second or third grade and was a bit of a wild card. So going into the solo stuff, I felt like I had to sort of tap into the more outgoing version of myself in a sense. It’s definitely part of me, but I had to very purposefully bring it to the surface.” 

On his journey as a solo artist, the Nashville indie-rocker has spent almost five years writing, mixing and perfecting his latest record, which was released back in September of this year. The kaleidoscopic album is an ode to a classic indie-rock sound, as FERGUSON wrote them to be “all hits,” as he told us. 

“My philosophy with this record was that I wanted to write a record of all hit songs, silly as that sounds,” FERGUSON said. “They’re all short, pop songs. No jamming, none of that. I wanted it to be very cookie cutter on purpose. And then the last song is this crazy piece. So you view all of the other songs through a different lens.” 

The last track on the record, “False Idol Fever Dream Pt. II,” is a contemplative, almost fear-driven piece that is a complete 180 from the first nine tracks of NEVER IN MY LIFE. The track almost feels like a psychoactive fever dream, beginning with an uptempo whimsical harpsichord that sounds like the start of a medieval primary school play. There’s then a fade in the sound, followed by an eerie minute long silence. It’s a bad trip, but purposefully so, complete with sounds of atomic bombs and deafening endings, laughing tracks and characters that are truly terrifying. FERGUSON wrote the piece during COVID, in the driver’s side seat of a van in a Walmart parking lot. 

“It was a lot of fun to make it, like the making of that song in particular was during COVID, so I was living in a house with like eight of my relatives,” FERGUSON said. “I couldn’t record, so I would go late at night to the local Walmart and create all these characters and stuff. I would record it into voice memos on my phone, and then I would put all the recordings into my computer and f*** with it. I would become all these characters. And I would just sit in my van and talk to myself for like an hour. I probably looked insane.” 

NEVER IN MY LIFE is an album that truly takes listeners on a journey. There’s something refreshing about the creativity that’s weaved throughout the album, especially on the last song. FERGUSON successfully created an album that’s full of sonic texture and garage-rock groove, cemented by the twist of terror at the very end that leaves listeners satisfied and eccentric.