Midnight Faces
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The third album from duo Matthew Doty (guitar/bass/synth) and Phil Stancil (vocals/guitar/bass), Heavenly Bodies is the first to feature drummer Paul Doyle as a full-fledged collaborator and the thrilling expansion of a sound begun on 2013’s Fornication. For that album, Midnight Faces’ debut, Stancil brought vocals to Doty’s existing songs; 2014’s The Fire Is Gone saw a more thorough partnership emerge between the two musicians, and praise for the record flowed from outlets including SPIN, Entertainment Weekly, VICE, and Nylon. And now, Midnight Faces returns with a more evocative sound than ever. From the widescreen guitars of opener “Blue Haze,” to the delectable electronic textures of “Space Boy,” to the twilight rush of “Feeling Like a Stranger,” the songs of Heavenly Bodies feel like breath in the lungs, ready to carry you forward wherever you want to go.
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Doty and Stancil met in Grand Rapids, MI, though both were initially involved in separate projects. Doty had gained attention in the early 2000s with his band Saxon Shore, co-founded with his friend Josh Tillman, now better known as Father John Misty. Later, he’d catch Stancil singing during a gig at a bar. When they began playing together, Stancil says, it was a smooth transition, if a bit outside of his comfort zone. Stancil’s voice, rich and warm, sounds lifted from the golden age of ’70s and early ’80s classic rock, while Doty’s compositions tended toward a sound more reminiscent of dream-pop, shoegaze, and post-punk’s skittering energy. “I’d never written music from that standpoint,” Stancil explains, “and stylistically it was different, but it all came together pretty quickly for us.”
The synchronicity shows: Stancil’s voice lends weight to Doty’s emotive, atmospheric songs, while Doty’s precise, layered songwriting lets Stancil’s vocals float to the top of the mix, driving these indie-minded tracks with the directness of strongly melodic, instantly memorable classic rock. Together, with Doyle’s steady percussion, the songs of Heavenly Bodies take on a yearning, nostalgic—but never despairing—quality. It’s as if you’d been humming them to yourself in a montage of your memories, only realizing it when the song ends. Luckily, you can start over again with Heavenly Bodies whenever the moment takes you, which, with a band as graceful and immediate as Midnight Faces, it’s sure to do over and over again.
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