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Pride and Joy Music [Releaae date 23.06.23]
This is an impressive fourth release in under six years from Midnite City, confirming them as one of the most enduring of the select band of UK melodic rock acts. It doesn’t mess with their established style and even the presence of a ghetto blaster on the cover tells you their hearts still lie firmly in the latter part of the eighties.
Opener ‘Ready to Go is a suitably up-tempo anthem with Shawn Charvette’s stabbing keyboards prominent in the mix and a hook-filled chorus with the requisite ‘who-ahs’. ‘Someday’ is nothing less than a melodic rock classic, the tone set in a glorious opening 40 seconds in which guitarist Miles Meakin plays the chorus melody then waves of keyboards break in: the vocals, especially on the chorus, remind me of Blue Tears and the song bears all the hallmarks of the music I still love.
‘Hardest Heart to Break’ has a naggingly familiar ring to it and is a lush, mid tempo number complete with closing ‘na-nas’ that would have been the inevitable shot at a hit single back in the day.
Danger Danger have always been the prime musical influence on the band, singer Rob Wylde in particular, but time and again on this album I was hearing Blue Tears as just much with ‘Good Time Music’ a case in point, the raspy catch in Rob’s voice like the late Gregg Fulkerson himself likened at the time to early Jon Bon Jovi.
Yet even better is to follow with a pair of tracks in ‘All Fall Down’ and the glammier ‘Girls Gone Wild’ that have the hooks-on-steroids big choruses that the likes of Desmond Child and Jack Ponti wrote back in the day. Indeed a guitar solo recent of Richie Sambora’s on ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ even graces the former.
The rest of the album naturally doesn’t quite match those heights and after the mid tempo ‘Beginning of the End’ with some more modern keyboard touches, ‘Raise the Dead’ is heavier by their standards (and reminiscent of Alice Cooper when he jumped aboard the glam metal train) with Miles cutting loose on guitar. ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’ is a polished ballad that raises those Blue Tears comparisons again and the bright and breezy ‘Like No Tomorrow’ ensures the album does not end in anti-climax.
Their publicity blurb describes Midnite City as the UK’s leading hair metal band, but to me that undersells them- like Danger Danger and Scandinavian standard bearers Crazy Lixx they combine a sleazy glam image with the ability to craft more AOR styled melodies and choruses to rank with the very best. Their best produced effort with Chris Laney’s mix giving it a sharper focus, this feels like their most convincing effort yet. **** 1/4
Review by Andy Nathan
Gig review (London, June 2023)
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