The Daily Spin II

The Midnight | Monsters

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Monsters (2020)

Artist: The Midnight

Link:

This one hurts a little - I want to like this record a ton, because the pieces for greatness are genuinely there, but I never quite think that Monsters gets to the point where it all comes together. It’s a little like watching Miguel Sano play - he’ll wow you with some otherworldly bombs, and then immediately return to pant-shitting form and remind you why he’s not playing in the majors anymore - love you, king.

That’s really what it boils down to. You can have the pieces - 90s-style production, some really nice instrumentation - and a way-too-liberal application of the vocoder, to absolutely demolish a lot of the good going here. Additionally, the other huge issue is simple - your song has to actually hit a climax at some point. Instead, most of Monsters drags along that knife-edge, teetering like an oh-so-arrogant child at a playground about to understand gravity, face first. It never breaks into that ecstasy, and the album is significantly worse off without those highs.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: Deep Blue

Worst Tracks: Fire In The Sky