Bright Midnight - The Fringe

Hear The Track Here

Like many people with a fascination with words, I am a voracious reader. I read anything, bus tickets, 3 day old newspapers, instructions from Ikea you name it, I'll scan it. The other day, for example, I happened to be reading a piece in one of the newspapers I devour each day that Green Day has come out with their own version of Guitar Hero which I applaud. Not because it's Green Day, but because at least it gives people a lot more exposure to music they wouldn't maybe have heard before. Imagine a Grunge Guitar Hero, a punk Rock Band, Soul Vocal Hero - the list is endless. Anyway, by way of apology for dragging Green Day into this conversation - I don't like them that much - the reason I bring all this up is because not only is that not only do these programs feature reasonable commercial music, Rock Band also features unsigned musicians who can get tracks on there.

Step forward Dallas's own Bright Midnight who, at the time of this review, has at least ten tracks on there. See, easy when you know how. Hillis Emanuelson, Austin Merrill and Andrew Hourani make up Bright Midnight and very prolific they are too. Since I first reviewed them with Floating Feather (Sleepy Mood) (July 2009) they have been a regular visitor to my Soundclick review list. So out of the thirteen tracks on the page, I have so far reviewed ten and this one makes eleven. The range of reviews has been fairly consistent because a) Bright Midnight are a rock band at heart, b) they write very good songs but they don't always IMHO deliver the killer punch that maybe they should be doing. As yet, I haven't had a track I could get behind solidly from this quarter but I suspect it's only a question of time.

The Fringe owes much to Joy Division/New Order and if that sounds good to you, it should give you the buzz you need. In that way, Bright Midnight have always come up trumps, whenever they lean towards a genre, they usually nail it pretty well. For the plank spankers amongst us, this track is fekkin DRENCHED in guitars although - to give them credit - the bass player and drummer fight manfully to hold their corner and mostly succeed. While the band trumpet that this is a 'song for everyone' I'm sure they will be a few who question that statement. There again, there always are. If, however, a rough sounding cross between New Order and The Doors sounds like it might be fun, then dive in and maybe Bright Midnight will set up camp in your head too. Not, to my mind, as strong as some of this band's tracks.

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