Mike Midwestern – Inhibitors

I had no idea what to expect from Minneapolis’ Mike Midwestern. I truly had no idea what he’d sound like or even what type of music it was he played and so when I threw in Inhibitors for the first time I was pleasantly surprised.

Stranger came through the speaker with a soft piano melody, slowly building up before Midwestern’s polished vocals came through with the opening couplet of “Found my way back home. A stranger led me here /  So the irony, I feel a stranger here. So walk with me in the pub down the hill.” The song was slow but emotionally stirring, keeping a steady pace but ever so surely adding additional layers of instrumentation – slight drumming, acoustic strumming and a delicately placed bass line worked together, building on Midwestern’s vocals and piano melodies.

It was a soothing and emotionally exciting opening track that instantly caught my ear and he continued that into Quiet Town So Loud – a song that gets bonus points for not only the additional backing vocals of Courtney DeaKyne but also the nice Brand New reference.

Inhibitors was on a role and throughout my first listen it rarely disappointed.  It was really catchy acoustic pop that jumped ahead of notch with some varied instrumentation. As I listened I heard moments of Joey Cape and Tony Sly in there along with the occasional moment of Jupiter Sunrise in Midwestern’s vocal delivery. It took several listens to pin point it, but I soon realized that Forty Miles – a clear highlight of the album – had a lot of similarities to Eve 6’s Girlfriend.

After my first few listens, I was very pleased with Inhibitors – the problem soon became that it had little to no staying power.  I tried listening to it at work and found myself getting bored half way through. A few songs still stood out – Bleeding Heart along with some of the previously mentioned tracks in this review for example – but ultimately the songs started to blur together. Midwestern’s vocals are strong but a little too polished and radio-ready. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with them, but nothing truly unique or memorable to them either – and for a solo project you need vocals to be memorable.  Then comes the problem of the length.  Each song is around four minutes long which makes the songs start to lag as they’re not always strong enough to stand out on their own and start to blur together.

Mike Midwestern shows promise with his acoustic pop debut Inhibitors but repeated listens begins to unveil the many weak points of the album and makes it hard to give it much of a replay value.