(2020) The Midnight Choir - English Ghosts


Review:
A collection featuring the Sheffield post-punk group’s previously unreleased third album and a bonus disc comprised of a general selection, including some rarities, spanning their career, plus a booklet of sleevenotes. Arriving from a period in music when there were countless such groups up and down the UK, and around the world, who’d initially been inspired by punk but then attempted to channel the energy and attitude into sometimes very different musical shapes, The Midnight Choir began as an idea of Simon Hinkler’s of Artery. Leading other members of said group mostly pseudonymously into this new guise, alongside the late Dave Loukes from Quite Unnerving on vocals, the group themselves went on to cement links with Pulp and The Mission through the comings and goings of their personnel. Much like Artery themselves, there was more to The Midnight Choir than a simple doffing of the cap to the Banshees or Joy Division or whoever else at the time had done so much of the groundwork for groups similarly inspired but wanting to break away from the trappings of punk. The group were possessed of strong abilities to hone their craft to the point they had the potential to reach a far broader audience without losing the chemistry they clearly had at the outset. Shifting easily from a ravaged monochromatic sound to one rife with different hues, The Midnight Choir operated in that space when post-punk music took on new forms as independent music came into greater dominance throughout the 1980s. Like many others, they slipped through the cracks without really deserving to.





Tracklist:

CD1:
1. Slug Matador
2. Yummy Tadpoles
3. Cattle Mutilation Expedition
4. Halo of Flies
5. Flex
6. Stumbles Around
7. Cubist Cop
8. Pig-man
9. Idle
10. Sleepy Time
11. Balsa-wood Bob
12. Country Death Clown
13. Elephant Head
14. Surf’s Up (Turnip Down)

CD2:
1. Moon
2. Lazy Eye
3. Dumb Design
4. Madtopeekay
5. Cowboy
6. English Ghosts
7. Devil in my Bed
8. Overboard
9. Colorado Dead Man
10. Motorbike
11. Wizard
12. I Thought the Path of My Heart Was Far Away When I Was Sad
13. Today I’m a Snake
14. Suffer the Children
15. Kiss


Media Report:
Genre: indie-rock, post-punk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits