Road Movie – “Candyman / For the Night”

Road Movie have been building something quietly for a few years now, and “Candyman / For the Night” is the clearest sign yet that it’s starting to pay off. The LA-based collective has always had good instincts for classic rock with a little more going on underneath, and this double single pushes further into the darker territory they’ve been edging toward.

Both tracks came out of the band’s yearly writing retreat in Zion National Park, and you can hear that in the way the songs breathe. There’s a patience to them. Nothing feels forced or overly arranged. The recording spans multiple locations, including their home studio in Carpinteria, Minneapolis, and Nashville, but it hangs together well. A nice detail, singer Justin Clay’s 11-year-old daughter plays cello on the recording, and that kind of choice says a lot about how this band operates. It’s not a gimmick. It fits. Brothers Justin and Nathan Clay anchor the vocals and harmonies, and guitarist Nathan Goldstein’s playing does exactly what you want from that role, it holds things together while leaving room.

This is the most confident they’ve sounded to me. There’s a settled quality here that wasn’t quite there on the 2024 full-length. If you haven’t spent time with “Long Night in the Afterlife” yet, go back and start there. And follow Road Movie now, because with a new EP and full-length both on the way, there’s a lot more coming before 2026 is out.