Welcome to mix-tape rock and roll.
Welcome to mix-tape rock and roll. Middle States have taken bits and pieces from every song they’ve ever loved, a line here, a bass line there, a chorus over there and mixed them all together. They may have made a Happy Fun Party, in fact I’m sure they’ll sound fantastic when playing in a bar to a group of drunk people because they can play pretty well and all the choruses and bridges are in the right places, but until they stop regurgitating stuff from Guided By Voices, David Bowie, The Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock and more then there’ll never be anything about them that we can really fall in love with.
The parts all work, there’s just no style to go with them. It’s not as if there’s anything wrong with them, the songs are well played and rather pleasing actually, but you’ll spend the entire half an hour (it’s mercifully short) it takes to listen to this making a list of all the songs it reminds you of. What you’ll end up with is one hell of a playlist for your click wheel and, unfortunately, you’ll probably want to go and listen to that playlist before you’ll want to come back and listen to this, which is a shame really.
Words: Damian Leslie