It’s not just a song you’re hearing when Midnight Youth come barreling out of your stereo assaulting any workday complacency into submission with their blistering guitars, cocksure vocals and stomping rhythm section. No, what you’re hearing is the sound of a band. Remember those?
Before hip kids with laptops, rappers with records and preening pop-princesses transformed the musical landscape into aural blandness there were bands. Real bands, whose music and group identity would make you rush to discover where you could sign on and join up. It’s a sound you don’t hear much ‘anymore, but it’s unmistakeable and it’s what you’ll hear when listening to the new songs from Midnight Youth.
Hard as it is to believe, it’s been three years since we last heard from the group. Their ubiquity in the mainstream at the time betraying the two years of grunt work and dues paying they’d put in to become an “overnight success”. Their singles The Letter and All On Our Own gave the charts a shake-up, bringing stadium-filling hooks and rousing choruses back into fashion while simultaneously going gold in the process. Since then they’ve been largely quiet, at least on the home front, but you better believe they weren’t resting on any perceived laurels. Instead the band went out into the world and did what they’d always done; taken their music to the people.
Tours in America and a relentless gig schedule across the ditch in Australia saw Midnight Youth solidifying as a musical unit, tightening and toughening up and enthralling audiences with their raucous live energy. After playing the bejesus out of that first batch of songs the band realized it was time to start thinking about writing and recording their follow-up. They’d been “road-testing” new songs at gigs and, encouraged by the response, decided that their new songs needed to capture the enthusiasm and energy of the live show. To achieve this, Midnight Youth took a thoroughly unique approach. “That’s why the album sounds like it does. Because we’re the tightest band, not just musically but in terms of people as well.” And that’s what you hear when you listen to their songs; Midnight Youth is not just five musicians playing together, it’s a group, a musical hive mind, a gang. “That’s what rock bands are, we’ve finally given ourselves the chance to be the rock band that people need to know us as, because that’s what we are. The first time we turned the album into a show and this time around we turned the show into an album.
PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS:
AUSTRALIAN CHART HIGHLIGHTS – ADDED:
NEW ZEALAND CHART HIGHLIGHTS:
TV:
MUSIC AWARD HIGHLIGHTS:
Band Members:
Simon Oscroft (guitar)
Jeremy Redmore (vocals)
Matt Warman (bass)
Aidan Bartlett (drums)
Nick Campbell (keyboards, guitar)
Links:
Website - http://www.midnightyouth.com
Facebook - facebook.com/midnightyouth
Myspace - myspace.com/midnightyouth
Midnight Youth Twitter - twitter.com/midnightyouth
