Midwich Cuckoos – Death Or Glory

This is the second release by Midwich Cuckoos, and comes on the heels of 2018 debut We Are Everywhere, which I assume is a nod to the way the debut was recorded, whereby all the parts where created in isolation and then melded together. The band say this second release is more coherent, so I guess it was recorded in a more conventional fashion (all the band in the same room/ timezone), and to give the band their due, this is an ambitious piece of work. To say ambitious is to declare that the art understatement has been elevated to the status of extreme sport. The album is peppered with short musical introductions/interludes, which adds to the feeling of concept album, but I find distracting – my advice, listen once and skip them. The concept follows new vocalist Tanzy Velayne’s journey of atonement to regain entry to heaven, and I wish you all the luck in trying to work that out without the lyric sheet.

The first real song is Majesty, and there’s a lot to admire in the song, as it screams along at a breakneck pace, with an unpredictable song structure, which creates an uneasy sense of discord. However, this is balanced with a chorus to sell your soul for, before the song drops away to a slow chug, complete with guitar solo, before finally becoming a kind of choral chant. Crosses follows a similar unfamiliar format, with more dynamic twists and turns than I feel comfortable with. Again, I’m left feeling that I’ve just listened to either genius or pretentious unfocussed nonsense. Sucker has a chorus that reminds me of Hey Hello! at their most glorious pop hook best, but again the song leaves me swathed in confusion as a listener. I’m now five songs in and the thought rises “Do I enjoy this, or am I supposed to be impressed with the diversity?”. There are other gems littered throughout the album, such as You Used To Be Cool and Blood Mother, but again they miss the mark and are ultimately too clever to be memorable.

The golden age of DIY music is said to be the late 70’s punk era, but I think there’s a case to be made for the post Y2K, where the power and influence of the often tyrannical record companies to make or break a band has all but disappeared. It has been replaced with countless millions of wannabe’s with some inexpensive DAW software and a computer who can create music almost as polished and professional sounding as that which used to cost millions of dollars and sometimes years to make (Def Leppard/Gun’s N’ Roses etc.). On the one hand, this is a positive and lets anyone live out their Rock Star fantasies, but the downside is that there is so much music available now, that in an attempt to create a unique selling point and get oneself noticed above the melee of bands which proliferate, it is easy to lose sight of the basic necessity that songs need to be memorable above all else. Death Or Glory is the very epitome of the modern rock album, whereby a multitude of guitar based Rock ‘N Roll sub genres have been heaved into a large pot, mixed and cooked in the heart of the Sun.

The received wisdom would suggest that the end result is greater than the sum of their constituent parts, so as a fun game, let’s run through the genres whilst you listen. There’s the Hard Rock bits, Heavy Metal guitar solos, Screamo vocals, beautiful Pop harmonies, Prog time signatures, unorthodox arrangements, Punk attitude, loud and soft dynamics, and even the odd bit of Nu-Metal, so that should be enough for any discerning listener. The issue that comes through for me is that this deluge of genres and ideas is the template employed in each and every song on the album, which rather than broadening appeal, ultimately leaves me dissatisfied, and slightly miffed. The best way to describe any song on this album is it’s like dialling through a radio, and hearing snippets of styles as you scroll, before it changes to something else. Clearly this band want to create music to be taken seriously, and maybe I’m just too lazy to have to work this hard to enjoy the songs on show. Maybe this is music created for a new generation with small attention spans, and I simply don’t get it, or maybe the grandeur of the ideas stood in the way of old fashioned concept’s like tunes.

Death & Glory will be released on the 8th April and can be pre-ordered here