“Coral Den”
from the album Lion the Girl
2007
iTunes
MP3 – “Coral Den” [right-click/save-as]
L.A. dream-pop quartet Midnight Movies formed in 2002 via the rock-honored tradition of the alt-weekly want ads and were quickly embraced by a local scene that apparently can’t get enough woozy female-fronted rock acts (Giant Drag, the Like, Rilo Kiley). Vocalist/organist Gena Olivier, guitarist Larry Schemel, and keyboardist/bassist Ryan Wood supply the swoons while drummer Sandra Vu keeps the beat.
Midnight Movies validate their nom de guerre by trafficking in a strain of the same type of late night eeriness that underlines classics like Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Their sophomore album, Lion the Girl, produced by Steve Fisk (Nirvana, Screaming Trees, Pell Mell) and slated for an April release, is an alternately floating and driving affair. Schemel and Wood manufacture My Bloody Valentine-lite soundscapes that range from ominous and fractured to lazy and lilting. Olivier’s ghostly vocals always suggest an altered consciousness; it’s just not clear if she’s having a good dream or a bad one. “You saved me from the bats in the chimneys / I guess I should thank you again for that,” Olivier sings on the album’s closer, “Two Years.”
“We recorded our latest album in a haunted studio in Seattle,” Schemel told Spin.com. “It was built underground with granite walls in a house over looking the ocean, and it was the last place Kurt Cobain recorded music.”