Album Reviews
‘Midnight City’ is album number three for Austin, TX’s Drakulas. Not bad for something that started out as a side project for members of the almighty Riverboat Gamblers (Mike Wiebe, Rob Marchant, Ian Walling) and Rise Against’s Zach Blair.
Still strutting their stuff with plenty of garage-y punk and early new wave influences, the band leans more heavily on synths this time around, alongside poppier hooks, resulting in a catchier, less frantic album. Opener ‘Going Going Gone Gone’ is fueled by a Sisters of Mercy-like riff, while ‘Singing With My Tongue Cut Out’ is way more fun than you’d imagine a song with a title like that to be. Elsewhere, ‘Sex’ comes off like Parquet Courts covering a David Bowie song, ‘Learn The Curve’ sounds like a recently unearthed ’80s gem, and closer ‘Wheelhouse’ is a weirdly danceable, neon-soaked sendoff that somehow makes perfect sense on a Drakulas album.
If 2016’s ‘Raw Wave’ and 2020’s ‘Terminal Amusements’ showed a band exploring and defining their sound, then ‘Midnight City’ is the album where they fully cut loose and have fun with it. There’s a lot going on across these twelve songs, but it all sounds unmistakably like Drakulas.
Midnight City track listing:
- Going Going Gone Gone
- Singin' With My Tongue Cut Out
- Head In The Clouds
- Is It Enough
- White Off Your Nose
- Garbage Strike
- Sex
- Morning/Night
- Guys Like Me, Girls Like You
- F.A.F.O.
- Learn The Curve
- Wheelhouse
Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.
