The Midnight Interview: The Musicality of Harnessing Connections
The Midnight transport us to the age of the 80s and 90s in their latest sequence of releases. In an epoch booming with technology, songwriter and vocalist Tyler Lyle and producer Tim McEwan open the floodgates to a world of nostalgia for the past. In a world where we are inundated with information and connectivity, The Midnight show us the true meaning and emotional effects of being physically and personally attached to our surroundings.
We chat to Tyler Lyle about the need to stabilise human connections for future generations, despite our technological ecosystem. Tyler also details the evolution of The Midnight’s live show, that is soon conquering Australia at Splendour In The Grass and their accompanying side shows.
The Midnight’s ‘Kids’ album and single ‘America Online’ comprehensively recount nostalgia and the technological sphere.
The group cater to a generation that craves physical connections they once had, and to a younger generation, helping to elucidate the possibility of being less reliant on technology.
Can you talk about the process of building your music in order to amalgamate two sets of audiences?
It’s funny because the idea of social isolation is not new. It’s an old idea, it’s just that now, it’s so pronounced. We’re dealing with this new trend with social media and always having a computer connected to our brain, in our pockets all the time and relying on it to help us. It’s sort of like the line in Jurassic Park, ‘we spent so much time figuring out if we could do something, we didn’t stop to think if we should do something’.
Our point of view is not a criticism on the Internet or social media. We’re artists and we don’t have a strong moral stance, but we are interested in the idea of longing and connection and what it does when your sense of empathy is not being created face to face. I have a young son and he’s got friends and when one of the other kids hurts another kid, the kid cries. The kid who hurt him has to look in his eyes and see that hurt. There’s a very cynical sense of empathy that we don’t have access to in the same kind of way when we’re connected via our avatars or our profiles.
It’s our profiles connecting, not the physical presence of each other. Like the song ‘Wave’, [says] ‘we are not a sentimental age, but when we dream we’re melting together’ what we crave. That connection and being consumed in that big flowing wave of life, where we’re all one and we’re all connected. As we become more isolated, we crave connection more.
Do you think the process of making the music and developing these ideas was ever isolating in any way?
If I were making this music all by myself, I would probably say yes. But, it’s a very collaborative process. My producer Tim spends the majority of hours going through these sounds. We didn’t know that ‘America Online’ would have vocals until he was basically finished with the track. Then, he said ‘would you write some words to this?’ I wrote some words very quickly and he decided to use the vocoder and it was mastered shortly after.
It’s really nice to have a collaborative partner. I’m sure he feels long bounds of isolation when he’s working on drum sounds alone in his LA studio. It’s a question that I care about because I’m raising a son and I want to know what society looks like for him. I understand the dangers of too much screen time, but I want to know the spiritual dangers. What are we actually losing in ourselves as communities start to go online?
The Midnight’s angle on yearning for the past serves as a tool to educate people and heighten awareness on our contemporary climate.
Did you see it as a vehicle for that whilst making it?
I think I was reading so much, and I had a podcast [called From the Secret Lair], that I wrote and recorded for a couple of years when I was living in New York. I was consuming all of these books, trying to really figure out why Trump won the presidency. I read all of these books about the word is anomie. It’s [a theory from] this French sociologist named Émile Durkheim. He was trying to figure out why the suicide rate kept going up in France. It was happening as people stopped being Catholic and began being protestant in their own ways and became disconnected from the traditions of community.
That was the key to understanding that we’re losing something that was core to what we thought being human was in the previous generation, going back a long way. And [asking], how do I keep myself anchored into the ground? Is that [through] a spiritual community, a group of friends? How do I stay connected to other people and the physicality of other people? Real groups and real people. I didn’t mean for the record to seem too much like a warning or preaching at anybody. It’s really more of me digesting these questions for myself. I’m researching pretty voraciously because these questions matter to me in a way that they never have before because of my son.
Speaking of community being lost, how have you noticed your contribution in building community around music? Has it been different between states and between countries?
Yeah, it is [different], but we love it. A lot of times we meet fans who say that this is their first concert and they’re in their thirties. They’ll be able to connect with other people in there in their city. We really do hope that an added component of us making music and coming to play it in a city is that the people there connect to each other and are fans of each other in a way.
That’s happening in really beautiful ways. The audiences are always different no matter what city. Some are more excited and some are more subdued, but I think that we attract people who are kind of like us. People who are searchers and pilgrims. People who on one hand want to dance and have a good time and a good back-beat, but who are also self-reflective people who want to know how to live in a better way.
How are you constructing the live show to implement that balance? Is that where yours and Tim’s contrast is valuable?
Tim grew up being a drummer and that’s his forte. He’s got his drum pads and synthesisers off to stage right. I have a guitar and am on the vocals for all of the songs. The energy and the dynamic interplay between the audience and myself is often on my shoulders.
We also have a saxophonist off on stage left and in specific moments during the show he’s the one that has all the focus and attention and brings the fun. It’s changed every night and I think we’re at show 51 or 52. We were at show five this time last year. It’s been a very quick learning experience for us, and it’s still so early on. We’re going to keep growing the live show.
The Midnight steer their focus towards enkindling a pleasurable live setting for their audience. It serves a dual purpose, acting as their haven to experiment with new music and delivery.
Is playing live and receiving audience feedback a vehicle that helps you refine your upcoming work?
You can definitely tell when you’re doing something that’s not right. There’s so many people there now that have such strong opinions about what we’re doing and whether we’re doing it right or wrong. We have very vocal fans both ways. When it’s right you feel it, and when it’s not right, you feel that too. We’re just trying to become better live musicians, which is something neither of us have a long history with in this kind of arena.
Do you think the newness makes it more intimidating every night or adrenaline pumping in a positive way?
Both! I’ve spent the 10 years before as a folk, singer-songwriter playing to much smaller crowds with my acoustic guitar. My guitar style was finger-picking and playing chords. Now, I have to fill some of these solos recorded in the studio by professional guitarists and every night it feels like I’m jumping off a bridge into water. It totally gets my adrenaline flowing.
I wish I would’ve known, otherwise I would’ve taken some more guitar lessons back in the day. It’s totally challenging and it’s gratifying when it works. It’s a bummer for everyone when it doesn’t, but I think we’re all using it as a way to get sharper and as a way to get better. Hopefully as we’re able to grow a little quicker, we’ll be able to bring on some more elements that seem a little more polished [to] add to that professional sheen of the show.
‘Kids’ employs fillers and several sounds of the 80s to build context of the time.
Is addressing the context and setting something you find important in the live show too?
Yeah, I think you have to create a show with dynamics. It needs to rise and fall, and you need to make sure you have specific moments that are doing specific things. Sometimes I’ll come out and play a song with just me and my guitar. In ‘Vampires’, the saxophonist will go into the crowd and make that a moment. We just want to make as many moments as we can with how new this band is live.
Do you think that when you’re curating and expanding your show, you’re better understanding the importance of visuals and colours in the aesthetic?
Where do you see those elements progressing?
We have an amazing lights person. His name is Corey Mattonen. He runs lights for ‘Explosions in the Sky’. He was brought on for our third show by a guy who was doing us a favour, because we didn’t know how to put on a live show. He’s been with us since then and he’s amazing and such a pro. You want to find the middle ground between being cost-effective and as badass as it possibly can be. He’s always riding that.
Hopefully as we continue to grow and as our budgets get a little bigger for that sort of thing, we’ll be able to bring in some more lighting equipment and some more lighting guys and video screens at some point. That’s the easy part; knowing what to bring on. The hard part is figuring out that level of scale and paying for the production.
The Midnight have continually learnt from building a show from scratch and progressively elevating it. In turn, have they heightened their intent in the studio.
Usually things you’re good at help you in other foreign endeavours, but how has something you’re unfamiliar with helped your growth in areas you’re comfortable in?
We are currently writing the next record, and this is the first record that we are writing after having started a big chunk of tour. When ‘Kids’ came out, we only had a few shows under our belt. I think we only had one short North American tour. Now we’ve had a lot more.
Both of us feel more comfortable in being able to translate the record to live. We’re able to think about what we want to be doing live, and how we can put that on the record. We’re [focusing] on how [we can] put those moments that I was talking about into the record so that we’re able to enjoy those in a live setting. So, stay tuned is the answer to that! We’re working on those questions right now, but we’re having a lot of fun doing it.
Do you like the feeling of being on the brink of uncertainty? Not having a concrete idea of where you’re being directed?
Yes, absolutely! What I think a lot of critics of this retro-wave and synth-wave sound say is that it’s stuck in the past, but I see it as nostalgia is more of a trailhead. It’s an entryway into a whole rainbow of human experiences and colours. There’s so much we want to do and put into these records beyond even just the one we’re working on next that we’re excited for.
With the rapid improvements The Midnight has made to devise their identity, it’s difficult to see them going anywhere but forward. Whilst their work is imbued with nostalgia, the duo is prepared for the future. Their “best stuff is on the horizon”, and it’s Australia’s turn to witness the contagiousness of The Midnight.
It will be the duo’s “first time in Australia” and they’re “very, very excited about finally getting there”. You can see The Midnight live during their set at SITG or at their Melbourne and Sydney sideshows.
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