The Midnight have been at it for well over a decade, serving as a (the?) leading synthwave act for a good chunk of their run. Despite playing around with their formula considerably over the years — tapping into everything from traditional synthwave to 1980s hair metal, contemporary EDM, early 1990s New Age, and pop and rock — you always know it’s them. The core duo of Tim McEwan (music, some vox) and Tyler Lyle (vox, some music) have always deftly straddled that line between the nostalgic niche world and mainstream genres, never losing themselves in the process. This skilled blend is alive and well on engaging new single “Digital Dreams.”
The song kicks off with a dusting of what sounds like bitcrunch — that bit of distortion you sometimes hear applied to drums or synths in electronic music. The crunch encases the rhythm section enough to evoke a sense of darkness, but this is no darksynth track akin to those on the band’s 2020 EP Horror Show. McEwan layers on the bright, evocative synth pads and hooks that scream “THE MIDNIGHT” the moment you hear them. One splash of a trademark synthscape easily sends your mind to eras like the band’s 2017 album, Nocturnal, or its predecessor, Endless Summer. By the time Lyle’s haunting vocals kick in a little over a minute into the track, you’re sold if you weren’t already.
The mid-tempo number carries a formidable sense of foreboding, as Lyle sings about what seems like the troubled self-reflections of a cyborg, or someone who feels like one: “How do you dream/when you’re just a machine/imagining colors you can’t see.” As we enter a world in which half-wit entrepreneurs are promising bionic implants and the potential for direct brain-to-machine interfacing, perhaps it’s more about someone wondering what will happen to our humanity when all of this tech takes over? It won’t be a question simply of androids dreaming of electric sheep. Will we dream at all during our electric sleep?
“Digital Dreams” is out now via Ultra/Sony on most digital platforms.
Editorial Disclosure: Vehlinggo has released a song by The Midnight in the past, although I don’t take such a thing into account when considering the quality of their work for a review.
