Review Summary: Sugary Breakfast Cereal: The Album
For the last few years, The Midnight seemed on the brink of doing something really special. Last year's Nocturnal was good, but particularly 2016's Endless Summer was suggestive of a group capable of pulling off something similar to Anamanaguchi's Endless Fantasy: an evocative record capturing wistful longing for the 1980s and bygone youth. The biggest problem was consistency: The Midnight sounded brilliant in small doses, but none of the albums could capture the feeling so effectively from start to finish.
Kids seemed like it could be their breakthrough, on the basis of several outstanding singles. But it's another solid release that doesn't quite deliver on its promises. It still has some perfectly realized cuts of retrowave pop, like singles "Lost Boy" and "America 2." These songs capture The Midnight at their best, and in a just world, would be massive hits. "Explorers" is almost as good, falling short only due to some weak lyricism. Fortunately, Kids didn't deliver its absolute best goods months before release: the closing track "Kids (Reprise)" might be the album's best, and most successfully captures the mood The Midnight is clearly pursuing, with huge synths and effectively wistful lyricism.
If Kids had been an EP with just these four songs, it'd probably deserve a 4.5. But it's hurt a bit by two particular issues: too much filler and weak lyrics.
Opener "Youth" is little more than two minutes of old voiceovers about computers, while "Kids (Prelude)" is just a shortened version of the closing track, and not as good. "Saturday Mornings (Interlude)" is so on the nose that it practically dares the listener to groan in response. "Arcade Dreams" is the best of the bunch, being more of a full-blown instrumental than an interlude, but still feels a bit flat compared to the songs that precede and follow it.
"Wave" is easily the biggest problem with Kids. Most conspicuous are the lyrics, self-celebratory faux rebellious nonsense that glorifies the worst tendencies of being a hunchbacked Millennial screen addict: "We are not a sentimental age... we're all hooking up with strangers we will never see again," to name one instance. Not only does this song seem to contradict this band that is at its best when it's being very sentimental, but its disconnected chorus is a jarring turn toward EDM festival nonsense: fake transcendence that lasts only until you duck into the port-a-potty to vomit the stew of alcohol, drugs, and manufactured spirituality out of your system. There's a not-terrible song hidden in here, but it feels rushed and slapped together in pretty much every respect. The listener shouldn't have to wait until the third track of an album to hear something worthwhile, but that's what happens here.
The otherwise-excellent "Explorers" and "Lost Boy" are harmed by similar nose-wrinkling sentiments: "To the freedom fighters, to the Everest climbers... to the midnight riders, to the spark igniters"; "We were the monsters and fire-breathers, we were the quiet sunrise leavers..." It is not good to be reminded of the utter inanity of X Ambassador's "Renegades," and The Midnight are a much better band, capable of writing much better lyrics, than these excerpts suggest.
It might sound like Kids is a disappointment, and if you expected, as I did, something as consistently brilliant as "America 2" hinted, you'll emerge from the experience not feeling fully satisfied, like eating a whole box of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs in one sitting. But the best moments of Kids are more than worth it, even if the experience is undoubtedly enhanced by occasionally pressing the Skip button.
