Endless Summer – The Midnight
For me, this is one of those albums that is more than the sum of its parts. Whilst there are no songs on here that I’d be rushing out to add to my playlist, I did enjoy most of them, and collectively they do a very good job of creating an atmosphere and sustaining it for most of the 1 hour-plus running time.
Let’s dig in and take a look at the good and the bad.
The title track establishs the vibe perfectly, and the vocals and backing on “Sunset”, “Jason”, “The Comeback Kid” and “Memories” make for perfect pop songs. There is no “ohh, look at us, aren’t we cool” or false edginess here: songs that are well performed and produced and pass by in a perfectly pleasant manner.
“Daytona” is my pick of the bunch on this album: moves along with just a hint of menace and the synths are achingly brilliant on this track.
Despite the bizarre processed vocals on “Nighthawks”, I still enjoyed it because the music was interesting.
There were some good moments in “Vampires” and “Crockett’s Revenge” but yes, the “We’re-in-an-American-sitcom-and-a-character-has-just-delivered-a-one-liner-and-you-are-supposed-to-laugh-now” saxophone was too over-the-top and killed any positives. As for “Lonely City”, the awful vocals mean I’ll never listen to this song again.
So, I’m summary, it’s mostly good, some bland and in a couple of cases, downright awful.
And yet still I like it. I’ve listened about four times (except “Lonely City” where twice was enough) and still I’m not bored. This doesn’t feel like an album that I’d automatically love, but there’s more at play here than simply how the guitar solos stack up against Pink Floyd, whether there are Hammond fills to die for or how much grit is on display. In fact, let’s be honest, there’s a five-mile exclusion zone around this album and everybody is wearing protective gear, so grit wouldn’t stand a chance.
No, I’m talking about how the band have created an almost flawless time machine. On the Midnight’s bandcamp page, I found this:-
There is a Japanese term: Mono no aware. It means basically, the sad beauty of seeing time pass - the aching awareness of impermanence. These are the days that we will return to one day in the future only in memories.
“These are the days that we will return to one day in the future only in memories.” Absolutely. Whilst I was getting into the grittiness of Springsteen, Mellencamp and Earle very early in my listening career, I was doing so through the medium of radio – remember the days where Spotify wasn’t an option and you had to sift through 10 songs on the radio too find one gem? Well, during this period in the mid to late 80s, I was exposed to all sorts of rubbish, but I actually found quite a lot of stuff that I half liked: Lou Gramm, Robbie Nevill, Paula Abdul or whatever else was knocking about at the time. I also watched
Miami Vice and a lot of films around this time, and this album brought it all back. I couldn’t point to a single film that this reminded me of – it was more of a general vibe going on at the time.
I’m not going to pretend that I’ll be rushing out to buy synth music by the bucketload, but I like this album because it has no pretensions, no edge, and there’s no attempt to subvert – it’s an honest album that sets out to recreate a certain feeling from a certain time, and whilst it’s not perfect, it mostly succeeds. Give me this over any of the 80s new wave chancers who couldn’t sing any day.
7/10. A fantastic and wonderfully different nomination from
@BlueHammer85.
