Interview with The Midnight Club: ‘By the time we wrote ‘Two Lightning Bolts’, we knew that this was it, this was our sound’

LA-based glam rock band The Midnight Club released their electrifying debut EP, From the Stars, last month, a dizzyingly addictive album that showcases just why they are a band to watch.

The Midnight Club comprises Owen Coleman (vocals), Harry Springer (guitar) and Sean McCarthy (drums), three friends from Denver, Colorado, who moved to LA to focus on their music nearly two years ago.

From the Stars is a cosmic joy ride through their exhilarating sound and vision of what modern rock music should be. The tracks are energetic, fast-paced and intensely catchy with massive singalong choruses. When you watch clips of them live, you realize how their interactions with each other, the audience and the energy they create in the room subvert the expectation that a live show should just be a faithful reproduction of the record. As such, they create an entirely different feel on stage because they never play exactly the same show twice.

‘We’ve always had an idea as to what we want to do musically but it keeps changing’

They took a similar approach to writing this six track EP, according to Springer: ‘We’ve always had an idea as to what we want to do musically but it keeps changing,’ he said. ‘By the time we wrote ‘Two Lightning Bolts’ (on the EP), we knew that this was it, this was our sound and that our body of work would have to reflect that. We wrote it a couple of years ago after the Queen movie had just come out and it was a breath of fresh air. We’ve seen it a million times! We saw Adam Lambert play with Queen but how cool would it be to see the actors in the film play with them?’

‘Starchild’, the thumping opening track on From the Stars was inspired by a poem written by McCarthy: ‘I had written a poem that involved the word ‘starchild’. I showed it to Harry and he really liked it.’ Springer jumps in: ‘ I like this song a lot as it could be about anyone, about me, a way of life or someone else.’

As the song kicks off: ‘She’s the queen of the mystic moonlight, baby, and the face of the latest fashion, she’s a comet on the way from heaven, I feel her coming. She’s the moon in a sky of starlight, baby, on the third day she will glisten and if you ever take the time to listen, you’ll hear her coming.’ 

Earlier this year, they released an exuberant, completely joyous, video to another track on the album, ‘Love Yourself’, which sees them drive around LA and Orange County in a seriously sweet, red 1969 BMW. ‘It encapsulates the whole album,’ Springer said. The driving scenes were shot in Orange County and near Orange Circle (in downtown Orange). ‘A friend of ours, Tori, lent it to us and it was so fun to drive,’ McCarthy laughed. ‘Actually, we saw another one a block away when we were filming. After that, I started noticing those BMWs!’

‘The first time we used it, we spent ages on the website trying to pick a room!’

Parts of the video were shot in an office block in downtown LA, where every room has been designed differently and is available for rent. Their room came complete with a black and gold tiger, a bohemian wallpaper covered with birds and plenty of glam lighting: ‘Every room is a cool room with a different set,’ Springer laughed. ‘You can rent them on a whim. The first time we used it, we spent ages on the website trying to pick a room! And then you go there and the doors to the rooms are open, so you’re walking past going “oh, we looked at that one’, ‘this one’s really cool, too’.

Springer wrote ‘a certain amount’ of ‘Love Yourself’ and they then wrote the rest of the song together. ‘I sort of started with a Cheggy acoustic and kinda wasn’t really loving it,’ he said. ‘I worked out the riff and got a bit excited. It wasn’t one of my favourite demos but after our producer had worked on it with us, I loved it.’ McCarthy interjects: ‘I hardly remember the demo really…’

The song is designed to make the listener think about what ‘love yourself’ can mean, according to Springer. For McCarthy, the stand-out line is: ‘How long do you love yourself?’

As the song goes: ‘Oh, sunshine look into my eyes and rob me blind, you’re shaking as you dare to shine a light but you’ve gotta maintain yourself.
You’ve gotta maintain your soul self-image, there ain’t no sunshine when the rain, rain, rain goes away.’

Initially, they expected it to be the opening track on the EP. ‘When we wrote ‘Love Yourself’, we thought that was track one because we normally opened shows with it but it had already been out for a year and we didn’t want people to be disappointed because they already knew it,’ Springer said. ‘It’s about mixing values you’ve accumulated during childhood and adolescence. Conceptually, it was fitting to be number one. Sonically, in my head, I had it that the album should come out swinging with an energetic song.’ I tell them that ‘Starchild’ is a belter of an opening track and they seem relieved.

‘When we all moved in together in LA, it became more symbiotic’

In terms of songwriting, it tends to go in cycles: ‘A lot of songs are written at the same time,’ Springer said. ‘I write on the piano or the acoustic guitar. When we all moved in together in LA, it became more symbiotic and we can knock out songs together in the studio. The past several songs have come from Sean’s drum takes.’

‘Call Me Over’ and ‘Nowhere Fast’ were the last two tracks they wrote for From the Stars. ‘It was the first time that we were producing songs that were written that month,’ Springer said. ‘We got the inspiration for ‘Call Me Over’ from Tame Impala’s ‘Elephant’ (on their second album, Lonerism, 2012). It has guitar and bass, it’s very fuzzed out, very cool, unapologetically 60’s, Tom Shuffle just laying it down, it’s super cool.’

‘Call Me Over’ is essentially about being crazy about somebody, something that comes across strongly in the lyrics: ‘You wanna play me for the hell of it but you’ll never win the power-ball. You’ve got me shaking from the taste of it, couldn’t take me for an animal, call me over, super Casanova.’ 

Their debut single last year, ‘Close Your Eyes’, has both a retro feel to it yet is incredibly fresh. I tell them that it feels like a pep talk. ‘Yeah, it’s very much a pep talk,’ Springer said. ‘We were very young when we wrote it and I have way more of an understanding now as to what it means than I did then. It’s about dealing with a death close to me and change – were we going to go to college? It’s about staying true to yourself. There are strings and a cowbell!’

‘We’re working on getting a lot of songs into their final form’

Luckily for us, they have ‘a backlog of songs that’s overwhelming’, according to Springer. ‘We’re working on getting a lot of songs into their final form,’ McCarthy added.

We go off on a tangent talking about the great Christmas covers that have come out in the last few weeks and the conversation turns to which Christmas songs would be fun to cover. ‘I’d do a ballsy Jingle Bell Rock,’ Coleman laughed. ‘I would say the Hanukkah prayer song and harmonise the entire thing,’ Springer laughed. ‘I’m saying Roy Wood’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ but with a four-part harmony the whole time,’ McCarthy said.

Armed with a unique brand of rock and roll, they have fantastically eclectic taste in music: ‘We’d all say that we love Bowie, Queen, T Rex, all the classics and anything theatrical,’ Springer said. ‘So early 70’s glam rock. I love Supergrass and Talking Heads – anything with a good melody.’ McCarthy adds: ‘Recently, I’ve delved into Portishead and Loma. They have a very ambient side, very trancey. You get sucked in.’ Coleman says it’s very difficult to just pick a few: ‘I’ll say Roxy Music, Tame Impala, ELO and Elton John. Oh, and Jesus Christ Superstar!,’ he laughed. ‘I had a pink mohawk in my junior year!’

They’re also fans of LA-based Roy Robertson and New York-based The Lemon Twigs. Locally, they also like indie band Vista Kicks. ‘They’re really cool,’ Springer said. ‘Our producer, Taylor Locke, also has a cool new EP, The Bitter End.’

Springer jokes that they’ve just written an essay on who they’d like to tour with. ‘If we’re talking bands that don’t exist anymore, then Led Zeppelin because there’s no other band I like more for the live energy captured in the sound. Or Supergrass or Jack White.’ McCarthy jumps in: ‘David Bowie, that would have been the ultimate goal. I’d be very excited to tour with Declan McKenna, his new record is really great.’ Coleman is deliberating who to pick: ‘It has to be Prince or Freddie Mercury but if we’re saying alive, then Tame Impala, if you could end a set and vibe to them! Or My Chemical Romance for their reunion tour!’

(Photo from left to right: Sean, Owen and Harry. Photo by @obidinzeribe on Instagram)