Young & naïve enough to have never tasted disappointment, the midnight sky is the limit. With a honey under your arm and hunky to rest your head on, to keep you safe and warm – with his jacket draped over your shoulders – this song hits the spot. Los Angeles, the most iconic track on the album proffers the lovestruck fan a glimpse of good ol’ gas guzzling Hollywood Americana this is the makeout point anthem for all the swingers and high school sweethearts that got a taste of the good life. Move your hips Living in the days of Thunder Love is a fatal flaw When you lose your wonder Is a 4 letter word The city like a graveyard Is a smoking gun Littered with lonely hearts Love is a setting sun And the ghost of the boulevard While Kick Drums & Red Wine seek to emulate and devolve the more familiar ‘OutRun’ style. It is gripping, for it is an all too familiar tale since time immemorial the waning fires of maturity. Titular song Days of Thunder sears the burnt memory of betrayal and fracas into the mind but is as much an allegory for modern life and the its loss of meaning in essence – social decay. The song represents the fallibility of human nature and the will to rise above defeatism only to be presented with another challenge, while WeMoveForward shirks it altogether. Lyle exposes his disdain in searching for the next fix to keep him in Euphoria, before he succumbs to the pressure of every day life. Gloria in similar sparkling style is a blissful ensemble as a sweet tribute to The Midnight’s struggle with drug addiction and consequent recovery. This evokes a more vulnerable but also softer, nuturing side to this oft aloft, emotionally intense group.

The interesting attaché to this suave get together is the Indian Sitar, which grants the track a psychedelic flower-frolicking sense of sensibility. The intro The Years grabs the listener by the hand and takes them on a frantic dash down memory lane in a trashy part of town, borrowing aspects of neo-noir to compliment Tyler Lyle’s fond summer lover. How do we capture them? This project is our attempt to put time under glass.’ These are the days that we will return to one day in the future only in memories. It means basically, the sad beauty of seeing time pass – the aching awareness of impermanence.

If there is a proverb that could express the zeal of this enigmatic band it would come straight from the lips of frontman Tyler Lyle: ‘There is a Japanese: Mono no aware. For a star-dazed duo who are amateurs in the genre of Synthwave, The Midnight sure have broken the paradigm of OutRun impulse-techno heavy instrumentals -creating a more organic sound, in a music category that by its fervent nostalgia defies change.

The midnight days of thunder review