AFTERGLOW VIP PACKAGES INCLUDE:
– One (1) General Admission -OR- Premium Balcony Ticket
– Pre-show Meet & Greet and Photo Opportunity with Tyler
– Access to soundcheck with a group Q&A session
– VIP-Exclusive merchandise gift bag
– Commemorative VIP laminate & lanyard
– Merchandise shopping opportunity prior to doors opening to the public with access to limited stock of exclusive items
– Cash bar, prior to doors opening to the public
– Early entry to the venue
SENTINELS VIP MERCH PACKAGE INCLUDES:
– One (1) General Admission -OR- Premium Balcony Ticket
– VIP-Exclusive merchandise gift bag
– Merchandise shopping opportunity prior to doors opening to the public with access to limited stock of exclusive items
– Priority entry to the venue
Don’t say The Midnight didn’t warn you. After teasing fans on social media with ominous imagery, snippets of lush keyboard washes, and cryptic references to classic science fiction stories, the band that emerged over a decade ago out of Los Angeles returns with Syndicate, their fifth studio album (not even counting the three EPs released between) and their most ambitious and outward-looking work yet. Syndicate evolves The Midnight’s simultaneously retro and forward-looking sound while cementing the band’s status as perhaps the most musically and lyrically ambitious act to come out of the burgeoning synthwave scene.
The band was born in spring 2012 from the fortuitous meeting of two very different musical sensibilities. Atlanta-born Lyle emerged from the folk-inflected Georgia music scene that grew up around the legendary Eddie’s Attic live music venue. “I came to LA thinking I was gonna be the next Mumford and Sons,” Lyle laughs, recalling how he was put together with Danish songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim McEwan in what he calls “a songwriters’ blind date.”
The two quickly discovered the overlap of their creative Venn diagram lay in the moody, synthesizer-driven sound that exploded in popularity in the wake of the cult thriller Drive and especially its enormously influential retro-1980s inspired soundtrack. But the new musical direction required a lot of adjustment from both men. “Up until then I’d been moving in more traditional pop circles,”recalls McEwan, “and I really had to unlearn those tendencies.”
The result is a listening experience that evokes in the listener Proustian sense memories of first loves and afternoons on the couch playing 8-bit video games while simultaneously feeling downright cinematic. In a genre sometimes derided for trafficking in easy nostalgia, The Midnight eschews putting air quotes around the DX7 solo of a 1980s radio hit in favor of washing over listeners and making them feel like they’re standing on a rainy street under neon inside a Michael Mann or a Tony Scott movie.
Despite its often heady and heavy themes, Syndicate ends up being less about endings and more of a journey toward an unknown destination. Lyle frames it simply:
“Everything is ending, so let’s get started now.”