COLD WAVES DIVIDE US

It took almost six years for the Scottish female duo MIDAS FALL to follow up the excellent "Evaporate" reviewed at the time on profilprog. com by the no less excellent Gérald HAWEY! A duo which became a trio for the new album "Cold Waves Divide Us" with the inclusion of Michael HAMILTON, a multi-instrumentalist like the two girls, this is also the fifth disc of MIDAS FALL.

Summarizing and fitting MIDAS FALL somewhere is relatively complicated, their music is a mixture of alternative rock, progressive rock and post rock, I would personally classify them as climatic rock in that there are calm passages and others on the contrary very rock, very energetic, the title track is therefore very representative of what I have just written. It is sometimes said that the voice is an instrument in its own right, that is exactly what happens here with the vocals of Elizabeth HEATON. Female vocals are an element that must be taken into account in the originality of their music.

The opening track "In the Morning We'll Be Someone Else" begins gently on the piano before the guitars appear tense and nervous, it's moving to say the least, a little Siouxsie side very present on the elegiac vocals of Elizabeth HEATON (9/10)."I Am Wrong" starts with tribal drums, the rhythm here taking precedence over the other instruments, it's almost post rock metal, here again it effectively cleans up the eardrums (8/10).The third track "Salt" is calmer at the beginning (fortunately in a certain way), this time it's ambient post rock wave, a tense atmosphere once again (8/10 ) from ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN with MIDAS FALL sauce! "In This Avalanche" delicate piano at the opening, Elizabeth's diaphanous voice, superb strings, deep and cottony at the same time, the first soft track of the album (8/10). Change of register with "Point of Diminishing Return", a powerful electronic whirlwind, reminiscent of Thomas DOLBY or even Gary NUMAN and his metropolitan army, all in supercharged mode, my favorite piece on the entire disc ( 10/10).

"Monsters" which comes next, is the second calm track, magnificent high-pitched voice, lots of strings here again, high class melodic post rock which accelerates gradually, a cross between THE CURE and ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN (already mentioned), the cream of the British new wave of the eighties with the sound of 2024 (9/10). "Atrophy" is probably the most ionesque of the pieces, where the vocal phrasing of Elizabeth HEATON joins that of Joanna HOGG, pleasant but one of the least exciting on the record for my taste (7/10). The title track which follows, the longest of the album, close to six minutes, engages in the same channel, ethereal vocals in a dreamy mist which soar well beyond from 1:24, evanescent without pun intended, the trills of six strings, mainly from Rowan BURN, burst out, even splashing on a mid tempo sprinkled with strings (them again) and percussions of real inventiveness, the second pearl of the work (10/10).

The last two tracks "Little Wooden Boxes" first of all, a calm, sweet singing, before the rise in tension of the guitar from 1:11 with vocals that rise higher, percussive handclaps, a climatic mid tempo, a bit like the whole album, which gets energized at 3:40 to close with powerful guitars, a wall of sounds (8/10). Finally the last one "Mute" is excellent in the melodic post rock genre, too short in my opinion, the listener is never satisfied (!), the unbridled synthesizers and the demonic percussions do tons to delight our ears (8/10).

MIDAS FALL, a revelation for me, it's never too late to catch up, I will nevertheless listen carefully to their previous productions.