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Midwestern Dirt Album Recommendations |
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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review. Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable. Midwestern Dirt[#] Twilight at a Burning Hill (2023)Midwestern's world might be on fire, but it's a very pretty fire. Reviewed August 18, 2023
Every new record from the Midwestern Dirt camp brings about an email from their frontman inviting me to listen to it early, and no hesitation—Twilight at a Burning Hill is their best yet. I'm actually kicking myself for sitting on it for a month while I was on vacation in Wales. In preparing for this review, I went back and listened to their older stuff again. Down the Stairs has a lot of personal meaning to me, but it does meander in spots. Sayonara never clicked with me like I really wanted it to. This one? It's a stunner. I believe Patrick has a new band backing him on this one, and they're more than happy to lunge at these tracks with an intensity and a purpose that their previous albums could only imply. Case in point? Twilight was tracked nearly entirely live in the studio. That's not to say this is Midwestern's hardcore punk record or anything, but they do match their trademark grainy-dreamy sonics with blasts of drum fills ("The Opposite of Shadow"), stabbing riffs ("The Aaron Waters Show"), and sudden stops ("Expecting Rain", "Tidus"), and the songs seriously benefit from the loose liveliness. John Golden's drumming gives these tracks propulsion that Midwestern's previous records weren't lucky enough to have, while the increased emphasis on Owen Hemming's keys (like the organ on "Wasteland" or the aching pianos on "Dusk") give much color to the proceedings. It helps that Patrick's brought his best-written and catchiest batch of songs yet, and his lyrics are consistently evocative, bleak, and world-weary, a soundtrack to strange times indeed. I've only got so much space to rave, so I'll put it like this: everyone's troubled these days. Do your part. Share this record with them.
[#] Sayonara (2020)Passing along into the afterlife. Reviewed August 18, 2023
Remember kids: sucking up to indie bands gets you everything. Two years after my glowing review of Down the Stairs and to the Left, the Midwestern-in-chief Patrick Kapp (last name change?) stumbled across it and I haven't been able to stop him sending me shirts and records since. (I'm kidding, he's offered twice and both times I've highly appreciated it.) That said, is being friends with the guy in the band affecting my reviews at all? Can I continue to be objective? (I am a person with an unspellable name on the Internet. I have never been objective.) I can say this much: Sayonara is a very good record, but in the wake of what was to come, it feels transitional: Midwestern toning down the mood for the songs, a very good step, just one with uneven results. Whereas Down the Stairs drifted in a sea of dusty reverb, Sayonara is remarkably direct. There's still dreamy guitars and vocals on it, but the band does a lot fewer slow-burning codas and the mix doesn't marinate in effects quite as heavily, leading to stark, catchy moments like "Milk & Sugar" and the much-improved Leonard Cohen cover "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes". The issue is the directness exposes some underwritten cuts like "Handshake Love", and at nine songs over 40 minutes, having a ten minute outro suite where a five minute medley would've worked much better feels wasteful. I don't want to be negative, though, and Sayonara is still two-thirds winners; "Iceland" and "Black Lotus" in particular are chilly, tightly-wound nuggets of mourning. I bet they'd be even better on a really good live album with his new backing band. Hint hint, Patrick.
[#] Down the Stairs and to the Left (2018)BRIAN AUBERT SOLO RECORD okay not quite. Reviewed December 21, 2018
"These guys sound just like Silversun Pickups," I said as I passed this new Midwestern Dirt record to Neo in a DM. I hate to define a record like that, but it really is striking just how well singer-guitarist Patrick Mangiaforte can emulate Brian Aubert's dusky, high-pitched whispers, cracks and all. Other similarities pop up, notably the wandering song structures the Pickups played with early in their career, but that's about it. You won't see Midwestern Dirt kick up a firestorm of delay, the guitars and harmonicas are too rootsy, and Nikki doesn't sub in for a bridge on the title track, which comes very close indeed to Pikul. (If anything, the talk of boats sounds more like Earlimart, but that's neither here nor there.) Yes, despite the comparisons, the group can more than easily stand on their own. "How to Win Friends and Influence Your Uncle", whose title has nothing to with the lyrics, has the structure and drive to make for an absolutely infectious lead single. It's one of the few times the group seems to go somewhere with their very organic, reverberating indie rock. "Act Like You've Been Here Before" and the pensive "Volcano" are similar highlights. This record, especially towards the middle, is the definition of a slow burner, so it might take a few listens for some of the less immediate tracks to click. If you stick with it though, this has all the hallmarks of a group with both the songs and the style to go somewhere with them.
[#] Amendments (2017)If you're on that boat, you've got nothing better to do anyway. Reviewed August 18, 2023
In all my talking to Patrick Kapp, the man rolling around in all the Midwestern Dirt, I've learned he's not a big fan of their debut, Amendments. Hey, I didn't think much of it for a long time either, I got on with the next album. I knew I loved the title track, this echoing, rumbling, six minute bout of moody, distorted strums and wailing leads in the cavernous darkness, with lots of lyrical languishing that turns to rolling thunderclouds on the chorus over top. It's easily the album's most effective moment, but beyond that, it just seemed like a lot of aimless strumming. I'm more kind on it now; this is the rougher, more primordial version of the Midwestern I fell in love with on Down the Stairs, and if you put it on and let it soak over you, you might just be surprised at what washes up next to you. When Patrick sings "It's the same notes and progression/To a song you've heard before" on "Words to Forget", he's not kidding. Mood, not variety, is the name of the game on this one, and Amendments by and large mines the same tone, the same strumming patterns, and the same loping musical feel across all eleven (nine, if you don't count the guitar interludes) songs. It does lead to songs that should've ended a minute earlier ("Medicine" is a particular patience-tester), but there's successes too: "Cracks" is a satisfying bluesy opener painted in bassy scratches, and the title track, as said, is one of my favorite songs in their whole catalog. I think Down the Stairs is this sorta thing executed much better, but anyone who likes that album will find at least a handful of tracks to like here, and for a debut likely crafted without much expectation for what was to come, that's plenty good.
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