Listen: Midnight Faces – “This Time”
The Fire Is Gone is the second album by Los Angeles-based duo Midnight Faces, comprised of vocalist Philip Stancil and composer Matthew Doty of Saxon Shore, the pioneering instrumental post-rock band founded by Doty and Josh Tillman aka Father John Misty.
Scheduled for release on May 13th, the album is the follow-up to 2013’s debut Midnight Faces release Fornication, which despite Doty’s astute reminder that “‘Indie’ and ‘80’s’ are not genres,” reminded folks fondly enough of those sounds to draw the attention of MTV Buzzworthy and MTV Hive along with popular and influential music discovery websites such as Under The Radar, My Old Kentucky Blog, Earmilk, and Baeblemusic among others.
To better understand what The Fire Is Gone is, please understand what it isn’t: No fancy producers, no big name special guests, no one wearing robot costumes, no all-analog studio, and no songs recorded live to tape.
“We made this album by ourselves and for ourselves,” Doty says. “We made it in my apartment on a computer one track at a time. If you dig the tunes, cool. If you don’t, that’s cool, too.” Fair enough, but there’s a damn good chance you’ll be landing in the camp of the former.
Still, Doty asserts, “Just what L.A. needs –another fucking 80’s new wave band, right?” Well, no. But when the songs are as good as what Midnight Faces is cranking out, perhaps the listener should be the ultimate judge of that? In fact, The Fire Is Gone is an even more evolved take on the sound that Doty and Stancil already had pretty damn near perfect.
“We laid the drum and bass line fairly quickly, but were unsure where to go next for a while,” Doty explains of “This Time,” the latest track from The Fire Is Gone recently premiered via The Onion A.V. Club. “And when I say a while, I mean like 30 minutes. I think we took a break to go watch ‘Shark Tank’ or something. Uhh, I mean have a beer and a cigarette. When we came back, Phil started whistling with a bunch of reverb on it. It just seemed to hit the spot.”
Midnight Faces Live
05/01 Hollywood, CA @ Spare Room @ Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
05/10 San Francisco, CA @ Milk Bar w/ We Will Be Lions, Owenstone
05/13 San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar w/ New Young Pony Club, We Are Sirens
05/21 Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater Record Release Show
Tracklist:
Musically Amusing 