Great Sounds Great; Bad Sounds Bad: Midnight Youth ‘Who Said You’re Free’

Every week, a panel of writers for The Corner will focus on a bunch of recently released local singles and grade them. We call it Great Sounds Great; Bad Sounds Bad. Read through the panelists thoughts below and let us know what you think of the song in the comments section.

[YouTube / iTunes]

[Grade: 3.7]

Dan Trevarthen: Really not my thing, but well executed. The gang chants and the moderately rebellious, ultra universal lyric make that a really huge hook for the masses. And riding a swiftly flowing stream-of-consciousness lyric you get there in a sports car-like 17 seconds. Lyrics like “I want a young love/I want a second son/I want the blink of an eye back from burning/I need a new scar/I need a lucky love” etc sound pretty nonsensical but as lyrical wallpaper they’re in the right spot between off-white and ‘what are those weird arrow things?’ He sings the keywords like he means it and definitely no-one is going to give a fuck by the time the clock strikes 0.17. With the layer of sleaze on those high octane riffs this is a rock radio wet dream. I might rate this higher if I thought more of their genre vocation, but let’s split the difference. ‘Who Says You’re Free’ is a hit, a big steaming pile of hit. [7]

Timothy Marsh: This is the sort of single that upon encountering you instinctively know is destined to accompany a montage in Home & Away. The sort that plays as one of the younger male characters takes his frustration out on the surf, struggling to maintain balance on waves that prove too challenging. The song will eventually fade out into the next scene as this Aryan-looking lad strolls into the diner, ready to resolve matters with whoever conjured this frustration initially. [2]

Matt Monk: On first listen, this track didn’t quite make it to 30 seconds in before I closed the page out of sheer frustration. But in all fairness I can’t very well say I don’t like a song without hearing all of it. Now that I’ve heard all of it, I’m happy to say it’s a bunch of shit and in no way something I would listen to. These stadium rockers can stick with Bruce Springsteen and Kings Of Leon. Every stereotype of good boy dewd-rowk is in here apart from a hardcore raspy YAEYAH. [1]

Dan Taipua: Someone needs to be making loud stadium rock, why not these guys? Have you seen that episode of Louie where he’s paining-out his daughters by yelling along to The Who? Who’s going to hate the guy doing that? It’s the natural and unfettered purpose of rock and roll. [7]

Duncan Greive: I had massive affection for three of the singles from the first Midnight Youth album. ‘The Letter’, ‘Cavalry’ and particularly ‘All On Our Own’ seemed to spit in the face of the forces at work in then-contemporary guitar music. They were too upbeat to be conventionally emo (though there was a strand of My Chem’s grandiosity in them), too chest-beatingly anthemic for the Nickelback set, and didn’t seem aware that Pitchfork existed. Those songs had a scale to them which recalled ’80s hair rock, and a similar lack of guile or self-consciousness. I feel like the latter qualities are everywhere in music nowadays, and while it’s perhaps counter-intuitive to find them absent in a band as radio friendly as Midnight Youth, something about the deeply unfashionable nature of their sound, plus the fact that with a few sonic tweaks they could hit an emo or ‘The Rock’ market bang on makes me think it’s more unaffected than our natural cynicism might assume. You only have to look at the fate of Against Me! – with two huge sounding, Butch Vig-produced albums in the past few years and nothing resembling a hit – to know that the no-man’s-land between core radio sounds is an uncomfortable place to be. Midnight Youth are no Against Me!, obviously, but the sound isn’t a million miles away.

Anyway – ‘Who Says You’re Free’ is a pretty ridiculous title, but so’s ‘Blaze of Glory’, and the song is pretty fun. It doesn’t have the swords-and-sorcery vibe that twinkled around the edges of the first album’s singles – mainly because this is full stomp right through, and the lack of dynamic range blunts some of the appeal, when set against an ‘All On Our Own’. But lyrics like ‘We’re just trying to live the good life/ Look at us’ still make me smile – they speak to a band which wouldn’t know how to shuffle their feet and mumble self-effacingly, one of the post-Nirvana ‘how to be a cool band’ lessons a lot of bands learned too well. The production is a bit more slick and modern rock radio too, but this is still a band which wants to play air guitar and sing into a hairbrush. Right now, in a radio climate which splits neatly into 4/4 for the under 30s and Adele-style ‘sensitive feelings’ for their parents, Midnight Youth remain a beacon of life and hope, so this gets a cautiously positive. [7]

Hussein Moses: Let’s get this straight – ‘All On Our Own’ is a [9], probably actually a [10] and I won’t budge on that. This one picks up on the anthemic aspects of that track (look at that title) but it’s a blow that takes the wind out of you more than anything else. There’s a sound eerily similar to The Vines and a couple of other garage bands from the early ’00s though (parts of this could’ve easily been pulled from ‘Get Free’), obviously a lot less scuzzy and with a different-yet-distinct aim in mind. I’m pretty tolerant of these guys though, and it’s not such a bad thing to aim to be a mainstream rock band in New Zealand – we could do a hell of a lot worse don’t you think? [7]

Matthew Plunkett: If you enjoy a good fist pump, here’s the song for you. Comes on like an amped up Eagles or cocaine covered Oasis. Unfortunately I no longer possess the long luscious hair required to experience the top down, wind billowing, cliff-top-car-cruise nature of this kind of song. A cartoonish MTV type of reality is at play and I have obviously lost touch with my inner rock swagger, my hard horizon stare, the meaningful gaze and the almighty bellow to the heavens. Keep strutting Midnight, I’ll get some hair replacement and meet you down by the Maserati. [3]

Eamonn Marra: I hate this from the beginning. Luckily it sounds like an Australian band so hopefully people won’t associate them with us. [1]

Luke Jacobs: This is the most corporate track yet from Midnight Youth. 50 year old record exec types will love this track. They’ll be able to spam it on multiple stations – it hits all the demographics. It sounds so clinical it felt taking cod liver oil. [1]

Phyllis Gabor: Story’s always the same here – styled-to-death band produce life-affirming anthems for Lamey McDryballs. [1]