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Big
Midnight: Everything for the First Time
The latest incarnation of the sadly defunct Bay Area rock-revivalists Richmond Sluts is Big Midnight. What this new band does differently from the Sluts is play a more straight-ahead rock, leaving the Sluts's comparisons to the Stooges and MC5 way far behind. Everything For The First Time serves as a great debut album, because as the title suggests, this is an entirely new sound to anyone who hears it. However, those words mean something entirely different when considered in the phrase's original context, where it is part of the lyrics on the track "Treat Me Too Bad," on which you can definitely make the connection between singer-guitarist Shea Roberts (who wrote/co-wrote every song featured here) and the late, great Johnny Thunders. As it has been said before, the album rocks; it also has some tender moments. Songs like "All the Dreams" show a sensitive side of Roberts as he begs that he "want(s) to feel loved" and when he confesses and repents for having "traded his love for sin" on the appropriately-titled "Love For Sin" with a voice thats a cross between Mick Jagger and Bono. What is curious about these slower songs regarding love (which are not power ballads by the way) is that the anthemic songs such as "Neglect Yourself" and "Gotta Get Down" follow the aforementioned songs, respectively. It's as if the track order has a theme that says Hey it's ok to have your heart and goals trampled on, but after you realize that you were hurt, you better rock with your balls out and not sit there pitying yourself for too long, cause we just won't let you do that. One track that sticks out in the torn-heart department is the track "Spent Too Much" where Roberts feels no remorse for a former love in the beginning of the song, and then halfway into the track, he absolutely loses it in a frenzy of bursting guitar before the music settles back into a soothing tempo with "ah-ah" backing vocals; but not for too long because the manic guitars and crashing drums come back into the picture to carry the song into the sunset as it fades away gently, which brilliantly depicts the way love tends to be for a lot of us. The meaning of the following track "Take The Blow" is unclear, but when Roberts brings in his best imitation of Jim Morrison proclaiming that the "sun is so bright" and that love is a stranger," it makes me wonder just how wild this band can get. A few motivational titles such as "Make It" and the album closer "Trying To Get By" show how a rough and tumble business like Rock n' Roll can be rewarding when you add enough fun into the equation as Big Midnight has done marvelously here. Alive Records has invested a lot of energy and time into this band, whose music deserves to be heard.
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