Midnight Album Review

When I first pressed play on this release I was pleasantly surprised to hear some very bluesy sounding riffs blasting at me from my speakers. Now I guess I’m a little bias here but I believe the blues and blues influenced genres are underrated, underplayed, and undersold, especially in New Zealand so when I here something like this it always gets me a little excited.

But then something different happened. The song went in a totally different direction. I certainly wasn’t expecting that to happen, and now I have to try and explain this.

Imagine, if you will, that Joe Bonamassa was a Kiwi. Imagine him spreading blues, country, rock and pop influences through one album rather tending to lean more towards one or the other throughout his albums. Now to add the final piece of the puzzle, imagine that he had a kiwi indie pop producer. And that is pretty much Jake Stokes album Midnight in a nutshell.

Killer bluesy riffs , shredding solos, and kiwi indie pop vocals.

In a world where we have to deal with so much music that sounds the same as all the others, hearing something that’s different to all the others tends to draw me in like a siren call.

This is the kind of album that could potentially draw the attention of people from multiple genres, as usually happens with this kind of crossover, and I’ll be watching with interest to see how it evolves and progresses.