This can be a new one for me: I’ve reviewed books, graphic novels, motion pictures, even t-shirt firms, however I’ve by no means had the chance to evaluation music earlier than, and – boy – what an album it’s! Once I was approached about it, the album was beneficial to me on the energy of its usually Halloween-ish lyrics (a number of of the songs brood with ghoulishly mysterious imagery of vampires, paranoia, ghosts, haunted homes, and non secular isolation), however little did I do know that – the place I anticipated to search out an anthology of gloomy night-pieces, I’d be delighted by an expertly balanced composition that juxtaposes the darkness of its mental lyrics with the velvety heat of one in all my favourite genres (prog rock) and one in all my spouse and I’s favourite bands, Lake Road Drive (a really particular affect to this phenomenal group).
One of many first surprises of End What You Began! is that (except for the “Thriller”-tinged verses of “Really feel”) it infrequently results the creepy or eerily subdued high quality that its track titles and existential material promise. Vampires lurk right here. Doppelgängers prowl suburban bedrooms. Ghosts wander deserted homes. But the prevailing temper is not midnight in a lonely mansion—it is the golden hour, within the midst of a jubliant crowd.
Midday Fifteen have made a report about worry that positively glows with brazen defiance. It steams with summery heat and golden brightness — a cheerful, funky energy — full with hammond organ and jazz-y keys harking back to Vince Guaraldi — that put me in a distinctly optimistic mindset, the type that makes me consider consuming wine at an outside live performance at sundown on a steamy June or August night with cicadas buzzing within the lavatory and the cool breath of night rolling in from aromatic cornfields. It is a kick-ass anti-depressant in album-form, with out sacrficing mental curiosity or existential honesty.
That will look like an odd option to introduce an album whose creators describe it as a group of songs about imposters, vampires, haunted homes, and the various fears that hang-out odd life. Recorded over the course of eight years, End What You Began! was conceived as an bold idea album exploring worry in its many varieties, from supernatural terrors to the quieter anxieties of remorse, self-doubt, temptation, and id. But what lingers after the ultimate notes fade isn’t dread, however delight.
It has a surging, juicy sound (self-described, precisely, as unapologetically maximalist) that calls to thoughts the influences of Sure and, particularly (an outdated favourite of each my father-in-law and mine), their keyboardist Rick Wakeman, whose personal macabre-themed idea album Legal File (which we play each Halloween on our report participant) feels prefer it had a non secular affect on the album.
(Two of my household’s favourite albums with very comparable parts to
End What You Began!: Rick Wakeman’s Legal File
and Lake Road Drive’s Dangerous Self Portraits)
Like Wakeman, Midday Fifteen doesn’t really feel the stress to make their meditations on humanity’s Shadow-self match a cliched or predictable sound; his darkest works had been usually his most rollicksome, and the place one other band would use the theme of worry to emphasise discordant harmonics, wistful melodies, uneasy stillness, and minimalistic simplicity (and there’d be no disgrace to it: Nico’s The Marble Index does this superbly).
For Midday Fifteen, nonetheless, worry is to be grappled with aggressively with out hesitation or restraint. Removed from wistful unease this album’s strategy is one in all operatic energy and wealthy expressive may, and its ethos is severe musicians having outrageous enjoyable with severe ideas, refusing to partition the bizarre from the fantastic.
Normally, Midday Fifteen’s defining attribute could also be their refusal to deal with creativeness as one thing separate from odd life.
Their songs inhabit a world the place vampire movies, haunted homes, political anxieties, failed relationships, private regrets, and summer time sunsets all belong to the identical emotional panorama. The band’s music means that fantasy isn’t an escape from actuality however one other means of understanding it.
The Ithaca-based ensemble has lengthy cultivated a repute for stylistic adventurousness. Earlier protection has described Midday Fifteen as a “prog soul” outfit and praised the group for its eclectic mix of soul, rock, pop, and progressive influences.
Earlier reviewers highlighted the band’s “powerhouse vocals,” “intriguing musical preparations,” and willingness to observe concepts wherever they lead fairly than confining themselves to a single style. End What You Began! feels just like the fruits of that impulse. The report confidently blends soulful grooves, earworm pop melodies, psychedelic textures, jazz-inflected harmonies, progressive buildings, and classic-rock power into one thing that feels fully its personal.
Listeners aware of teams like Lake Road Dive might acknowledge an identical refusal to stay to style boundaries or restrain their exuberant symphony of sounds. Like that celebrated ensemble, Midday Fifteen possesses an uncanny skill to maneuver between types whereas sustaining a powerful melodic id.
All through the album, each musical flip feels purposeful fairly than showy. A reggae pulse provides option to muscular rock-and-roll. Acoustic intimacy blossoms into dreamlike expanses. Funk grooves and soulful choruses coexist comfortably alongside progressive detours and cinematic finales.
A lot of the album’s attraction derives from its wealthy instrumental palette. Hammond organ swells by way of the preparations with a welcoming heat, whereas jazz-flavored keyboard passages often evoke the simple sophistication of Vince Guaraldi.
These touches lend the album an inviting, nostalgic glow. Even when the lyrics enterprise into uncanny territory, the music itself stays remarkably beneficiant. The result’s a curious and pleasant stress: songs about monsters that make the listener need to smile.
That distinction is maybe the album’s biggest achievement. Worry and horror have clearly been related to darkness, alienation, and despair, however Midday Fifteen approaches the style from a distinct angle. The supernatural parts operate much less as engines of worry than as autos for exploring deeply human experiences.
The vampire narratives and haunted-house imagery usually really feel nearer to episodes of The Twilight Zone than standard horror tales, utilizing fantastical premises to light up emotional truths. Worry, in any case, isn’t about monsters. It’s about uncertainty, loss, remorse, longing, and the unsettling risk that we might not totally perceive ourselves.
This thematic strategy aligns with feedback made by the band all through the album’s lengthy gestation. Earlier discussions of songs akin to “Straightforward” emphasised themes of confronting the inner and exterior conflicts that hold us standing nonetheless, whereas different tracks discover id, regret, and private transformation by way of imaginative narrative frameworks. What might have grow to be a group of novelty songs as a substitute emerges as one thing much more considerate and emotionally resonant.
The album’s various tracklist gives listeners quite a lot of musical and lyrical pleasures. The title monitor, “End What You Began,” transforms a seemingly forgettable vampire movie right into a intelligent meditation on obsession and the porous boundary between fiction and actuality, pairing one of many album’s most imaginative ideas with Midday Fifteen’s reward for memorable melodies. “Imposter” leans into uncanny horror, spinning a story of a partner changed by a mysterious double and tapping into one of many oldest and most unsettling fears in speculative fiction: the fear that the individuals we love might not be who they appear. In contrast, “Straightforward” showcases the band’s soulful aspect, marrying heat grooves and wealthy textures to lyrics in regards to the private and exterior boundaries that hold us from shifting ahead.
“The Tick” — with its acidic lyrics a couple of poisonous, manipulative blood-sucker — declares the album’s central paradox: music that’s structurally stressed but emotionally inviting, the place intricate association and stylistic volatility by no means undermine the heat of its groove. “Really feel” (mixing Maroon 5-style funk with “Thriller” keyboard prospers) returns to vampiric imagery, utilizing supernatural themes to discover emotional starvation and longing, whereas the comparatively mild “Scared To” (harking back to the soulful better of Corrine Bailey Rae) steadily unfolds from intimate beginnings right into a sweeping emotional panorama, analyzing remorse, vulnerability, and the lingering penalties of phrases left unsaid.
Groovy and Guaraldi-esque, “Dinosaurs,” a politically charged composition by keyboardist Samuel B. Lupowitz makes use of the picture of prehistoric giants as a metaphor for harmful concepts that stubbornly refuse to go extinct. Somewhat than delivering a heavy-handed protest track, the anthem embodies Midday Fifteen’s attribute mix of intelligence and playfulness, wrapping social commentary within the band’s buoyant mixture of soul, rock, and funk.
The ultimate track, “Haunted Me,” begins with a sluggish, soulful jam – utilizing haunting and insanity as metaphors for the lingering results of a fractured relationship – interrupted briefly by a distinctly Wakeman segue (Wagnerian choral tones and shimmering chimes, drifting mistily round highly effective organ chords, evoking Legal File’s highly effective finale “Judas Iscariot”) – climaxing with a rollicking, coursing conclusion, whose layered vocals, strumming guitar, triumphant trumpets, percussive handclaps, and jubilant bells fuse collectively right into a jubilant apotheosis of defiant pleasure.
Within the background, the booming, baroque organ swells forth like a rising solar dispelling the darkness. When the jamming lastly fades, the organ’s superb peal stays behind like a rays of brassy gentle piercing the below stomach of leaden storm clouds, bravely reminding us that our free will, our decisions – to interact or flip away, to simply accept or decline, to fret or soldier on – are the indispensable resolution to residing in a haunted world akin to ours.
Collectively, these songs display the qualities that make End What You Began! so distinctive: imaginative storytelling, emotional sincerity, genre-defying musicianship, and a uncommon skill to make even the darkest material really feel inviting and deeply human.
The album’s prolonged creation interval additionally proves to be one in all its strengths. Recorded over practically a decade, these songs possess the arrogance and endurance of fabric that has been allowed to mature.
The preparations really feel lived-in fairly than assembled. Vocal harmonies settle naturally into place. Instrumental textures are layered with care. Transitions unfold organically. The band’s progressive instincts reveal themselves not by way of extreme virtuosity however by way of a willingness to let songs evolve in line with their very own inner logic.
For all of its conceptual ambitions, nonetheless, End What You Began! by no means loses sight of the straightforward pleasures of nice songwriting. The hooks arrive effortlessly. Choruses linger. Melodies invite repeated listens. Even the album’s most elaborate moments stay grounded in a palpable affection for pop craftsmanship. There is no such thing as a sense that complexity is being pursued for its personal sake.
What makes End What You Began! memorable isn’t that it transforms worry into music, however that it discovers how unusually joyful horror can grow to be when filtered by way of soul, funk, jazz, and the golden glow of a summer time night. The Gothic literary themes might initially draw this weblog’s readers towards the album, however it’s the heat that can absolutely hold them there.
In an period when so many artists chase more and more slim style labels, Midday Fifteen embraces eclecticism with confidence and enthusiasm. The result’s a report that feels each intellectually playful and emotionally honest, equally snug discussing ghosts and heartbreak, vampires and self-doubt. It’s a celebration of creativeness in all its varieties—and one of the crucial unexpectedly uplifting albums to emerge from such delightfully spooky materials.
Music-lovers all for experiencing End What You Began! for themselves can observe Midday Fifteen by way of the band’s official web site, noonfifteen.com, the place information, music, movies, and launch info are often up to date. The album will probably be unveiled over the course of the summer time and fall, starting with the only “Imposter” on July 10, adopted by “Barricades” on August 14, and “Really feel” on September 18, earlier than the entire ten-track album End What You Began! arrives on October 16.
Whether or not you are drawn in by the band’s infectious mix of soul, progressive rock, psychedelia, and pop or by its delightfully imaginative allusions to vampires, doppelgängers, and haunted homes, these staggered releases provide a superb alternative to find one of many Finger Lakes’ most ingenious unbiased bands because the story unfolds.
