The Midnight Echo is a band that can amaze you if you allow them to.
Once you download their tracks in your player, you can listen to them all the time and never get tired of their music.
The band’s dynamic second album Dichotomy was released on April 17, 2020, after the band’s successful 2019 six-week Chasing the Sun tour in Western Canada. The EP has surpassed 50,000 streams, with impressive radio play across Canada.
The EP Dichotomy shines, dealing with raw, varied emotional human experiences throughout the EP.
This album ages well. The more you listen to it, the more you like it. Give it several listens and you will see the layers in the lyrics, and on each track. One tune may resonate more yet the connection is what good music is about.
Listening to a band like the Midnight Echo makes that connection easy.
The first time you hear this band you will want to dig out that boombox, turn on MTV and crank up their tunes. The band has seriously managed to break out into their own unique sound yet keep true to their musical influences 30 Seconds to Mars, Angels & Airwaves, The 1975, Blink 182, and Taking Back Sunday.
Dichotomy shows a new air of confidence from their debut album Voyager in 2017. The music is more mature, vocals stronger and rich.
The entire album performs as a conceptual statement on humanity from a current and a visionary lens. The EP shows the growth of the band, with more intense anthemic lyrics, stronger vocals, and a greater depth behind their tunes. The EP has the synths, beat, and attitude with tight songwriting.
Toronto-based The Midnight Echo formed in 2016 by Joel Lalonde and Tyler Raymond after playing together since 2011. Joel started guitar at the age of eight and Tyler at the age of sixteen years. All the band’s songs are composed through a collaborative effort.
Their music is strewn with subtle, sweetly reminiscents of the synth-driven 80s New Wave tempered with the 2000s music era anthemic bravado, resulting in dynamic tracks that you must turn up loud to fill the room to experience. The EP captures the magical nature of times past, with the band’s signature sound front row. The album is a classic example of iconic bands that, without a narrative, manage to prognosticate through music.
The Midnight Echo has created a prophetic, iconic album. Yet, unlike Punxsutawney Phil who sometimes gets it wrong, this band serendipitously called the future and has nailed it.
Dichotomy is a trip down memory lane with minute influences of the cult classics eclectic impact of 30 Seconds to Mars, the Angels & Airwaves’ approach of tackling larger human themes, and the pop sounds of The 1975.
The Midnight Echo catapults us to a rich sound, with an EP release that is well-timed, not composed to fit an era yet one to define it.
Outstanding tracks are ‘Victim Mentality and ‘How to Escape Reality’. This is where the band gets real and stands out from its peers. ‘How to Escape Reality’ lyrics are iconic prophecy. If there was a track to call out as a prototype for music the next decade, this is the song.
Frequent references to the human experience, specifically in the songs ‘Carbon Copy’, ‘Victim Mentality’, and (the outstanding) track ‘How To Escape Reality’ set a dark, but the hopeful mood on this well done the second album.
Piercing tunes, ‘Paris in 39’, and ‘Carbon Copy’ explore human relationships. Track three ‘Victim’s Mentality’ explores the dynamics of victimhood, and how it affects the human experience. The vocals in ‘Victim’s Mentality’ are rough, yet it is exactly what the track needed. It gave the track the emotion needed to bring its message home.
Track four, ‘How to Escape Reality’ focuses on the art medium and the importance of escape art gives us. The EP ends with ‘Fever Dreams’ which authenticates the artists’ struggle and the band’s journey as musicians.
‘Fever Dreams’ is well-placed to become an iconic anthem for musicians, and artists in the post-COVID era.
The dichotomy of the album jumps out at you from the second track. ‘Paris in 39’ throws you into the music, followed by an extension of that pain in ‘Carbon Copy’. Track three ‘Victim’s Mentality’ becomes personal, throwing out a message that virtually jolts you. ‘How to Escape Reality’ and ‘Fever Dreams’ round out the EP.
The album comes together as separate parts of a whole while showing the dark and the light side of human experiences, thus aptly named.
“I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history”.
~ Pete Seeger
‘How to Escape Reality’ is the type of song that Seeger talked about. The lyrics dwarf into a prophetic anthemic statement on current social dysfunction and the current world climate.
The lyrics, “We all live tethered to a countdown that is fading faster” touch well on the escapism of art in human survival. The haunting lyrics, “We’re all just marked with cuts and wounds, filled up with poison and regret. I’m out here wishing for a world with new horizons ahead” are prescient, collaborated and recorded before the world shut down. Surprising and moving. Post-pandemic the song is bound to be adopted by fans, the arts, and the music industry for healing. The track has the makings of a revolutionary hit.
The Dichotomy is worth listening to.
If you feel like simply letting yourself go, turn Dichotomy on. The unique sound of this latest EP establishes The Midnight Echo as a first-tier, alternative Indie group. Period. Full stop. The end.
The Midnight Echo is a band to watch.
Dichotomy Available on the band’s website, Reverbnation, and Spotify,
Follow The Midnight Echo on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
– Dichotomy features Joel LaLonde on vocals, Joel and Tyler Raymond on guitar, Terry Benn on bass, and Trevor Johns on drums. Joel Lalonde and Terry Benn are on synths; Terry Benn, producer. –
*this review was originally published in May 2020*
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