If you've heard an Ex-Cult record before, the sound of Midnight Passenger shouldn't come as a surprise. The Memphis band's newest 10 songs don't offer a particularly significant step away from the sound they had established on their singles and 2012 self-titled debut. The Memphis band still create songs with plenty of momentum, two guitars, and their lyrics generally lean "dark" or "bleak." Often, this band occupy the middle spot between hardcore (frontman Chris Shaw was in Memphis hardcore outfit Vile Nation) and arid psychedelia (à la Destruction Unit).
But there's a shift here that makes Midnight Passenger a markedly superior album to their first one: The production opens up the band's sound exponentially. Nothing's remotely muffled, so the guitars jump out a little faster, and Shaw's voice is given more of a spotlight. It's an album with a well-crafted universe—Following the bruising, muscle-headed intimidation of opener "Shattered Circle" is "Ties You Up", and while it still features these prominent reverberating guitar stabs, it's a song that feels restrained. The percussion is given space, the strums are more concise, and the brief pauses lend an added punch to the contrastingly aggro chorus. It's also a song that shows how this band can take nihilistic lyrics about death, blood, and shootings and make them symbols for emotionally relatable sentiments. "Ties You Up" isn't about literally tying somebody up: "You can't keep pretending that all your scars are mine,/ when you should be dreaming of your next disguise," sings Shaw. He's seemingly addressing a joiner—a person who keeps assuming false identities instead of establishing their own voice.
On "Not a Threat", they acknowledge what it means to be an outcast. "No one's ever gonna get your mood,/ but that's not why they hate you," yawps Shaw. Naturally, this is stated with aggression, but this is the band empathizing with outcasts and loners. It's like a Memphis punk equivalent of X-Men comics. Ex-Cult never deliver flowery "be proud of who you are and never give up on your dreams" lyrics—everything's dark and tersely worded—but at least there are flashes of understanding or commiseration. That's why it feels like a missed opportunity when other songs pack empty sentiments: "I'm the voice from the sewer," go the title track's seething vocals. Hollow intimidation is probably the least interesting component of Midnight Passenger, especially when you consider that Shaw's voice in a sewer isn't even a fraction as terrifying as demented clown Tim Curry's.
There are stretches of the album that feel long-winded and threaten to breeze past entirely. "Catholic Entries" has some excellent studies in texture, like the scratch of strings which persists in the back of the song's mix. But it's a song that feels like it's in limbo and either needs to beef up the percussion even more or fully commit to heady spaciness. There's a line in the song about "the future of nothing", which is thematically appropriate for a more spare track, but it doesn't mean the song needs to persistently spin in place. It's all the more frustrating because it's just three songs removed from "Sid Visions", which offers the perfect formula for breaking that exact kind of monotony. Following a full minute of airy, haunting guitar work, which threatens to remain wispily inert, they kick into gear. The track picks up speed and volume, and when Shaw barks the words "She's dead! She's dead!", the album suddenly feels vital and electric.
On Midnight Passenger, Ex-Cult prove that their best results come along when they forgo the quiet in favor of something more brazen. There's a sweetness to the melody of "Lights Out Club" (similar in tone to Thee Oh Sees' "No Spell"), but it's cut with the occasional crusty, blurting low-end. This album has a couple murky stretches in tow, but considering they also have several satisfying experiments with texture, the missed opportunities are just hiccups between psychedelia-steeped victories.
