2008 Woodie Awards
Hello Midnight rocks Drew
Dan McCallion
Issue date: 2/22/08 Section: Arts and Leisure
I've been in on the Hello Midnight revolution since the beginning. I'm a "fan" of theirs on Facebook. I've visited their MySpace and heard all the tracks they've got posted there. I'm friends with two of the band's four members. And yet I wasn't quite willing to give them full credit. While I really enjoyed their tracks online, they definitely had an unpolished, basement feel-perhaps by choice, perhaps by the fact that they recorded their demo in a basement. As with any group, the true test of talent is how you play to a live audience. I made my way to TOE this past Saturday night with more than a fair bit of expectation that Hello Midnight might, in fact, kinda suck.
Future audiences, have no fear. They don't suck. In fact, they're pretty damn good.
Playing a mixture of original songs and covers, the band played for a full hour, and seemed to truly win over the admittedly biased crowd of nearly 100 that packed into TOE to hear the band's debut show. Opening with two originals, "Garbage" and "Intact" as well as a cover of Weezer's "No One Else," the foursome seemed both happy to be performing live as well as slightly humbled by the crowd, an opinion that was reflected by the band in a post-show interview.
"We were really happy with the turnout," said bassist Pete Rudolph ('08). "Everything went about as well as we could have hoped for."
The group completed their thirteen-song set by sprinkling their originals with covers of songs by the Arctic Monkeys and Ryan Adams, as well as the Beatles' classic "Help!" Especially good was the original track "Grime Girl" as well as a redone version of Kings of Leon's "The Bucket."
Lead singer Eric Yowaiski ('08) felt cautiously optimistic about the show.
"We felt pretty good," he said. "We were able to achieve our own expectations, and I was really surprised that we seemed to go above and beyond the crowd's [expectations]." When asked to judge the band's live show against the songs recorded in their demo, Yowaiski responded, "It's a completely different animal. In-studio, everything else is kinda toned down, so the onus is way more on my vocals. Live, it's more of a total sound that you're getting."
Future audiences, have no fear. They don't suck. In fact, they're pretty damn good.
Playing a mixture of original songs and covers, the band played for a full hour, and seemed to truly win over the admittedly biased crowd of nearly 100 that packed into TOE to hear the band's debut show. Opening with two originals, "Garbage" and "Intact" as well as a cover of Weezer's "No One Else," the foursome seemed both happy to be performing live as well as slightly humbled by the crowd, an opinion that was reflected by the band in a post-show interview.
"We were really happy with the turnout," said bassist Pete Rudolph ('08). "Everything went about as well as we could have hoped for."
The group completed their thirteen-song set by sprinkling their originals with covers of songs by the Arctic Monkeys and Ryan Adams, as well as the Beatles' classic "Help!" Especially good was the original track "Grime Girl" as well as a redone version of Kings of Leon's "The Bucket."
Lead singer Eric Yowaiski ('08) felt cautiously optimistic about the show.
"We felt pretty good," he said. "We were able to achieve our own expectations, and I was really surprised that we seemed to go above and beyond the crowd's [expectations]." When asked to judge the band's live show against the songs recorded in their demo, Yowaiski responded, "It's a completely different animal. In-studio, everything else is kinda toned down, so the onus is way more on my vocals. Live, it's more of a total sound that you're getting."
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