Album Reviews

Force Of Nurture
Midnight Reruns – Force Of Nurture
7.5
 on
Monday, November 2, 2015 - 18:03
submitted by
Thomas

If you liked Midnight Reruns’ self-titled debut, you’re probably going to enjoy “Force Of Nurture” even more. These Milwaukee natives describe themselves as ‘aggressive slack’ and that makes sense. They also get compared to the Replacements a lot. Which also makes sense. Hell, they even recorded the new album in Tommy Stinson’s living room. That’s okay though. He knew about it and produced the album.

“There’s An Animal Upstairs” starts things off in the best of ways. It’s catchy as hell, poppy even, and comes with slick riffs and an even slicker chorus. And all of that goodness is wrapped up in sloppy packaging that only adds to the charm. The same goes for single “Canadian Summer”, while “Ain’t Gonna Find” has a more punky vibe as well as a badass solo. Too bad they didn’t include a cowbell here. It would’ve sounded nice.

After those first three songs, they simply keep on going.  The title track starts off all loose and jangly, before going hardcore on your asses in the second half. “Sky Blue Water” is a short but sweet doozy of a song and “Where’s Ace?” comes with the kind of guitar harmonies that will make your head spin. And just when you think you’ve heard it all, they pull out all the stops and get downright epic in the 8-minute closer that is “Great Southern Rail”.

Basically, “Force Of Nurture” just is a helluva lot of fun to listen to.

Tom Dumarey
Tom Dumarey

Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.