Album review: The Dig “Midnight Flowers”

text: Laura Phillips

The Dig shake the standards of easy-listening with their new LP Midnight Flowers. Standing at the crossroads of rock and a shoe-gazer’s haze, the follow-up to 2010’s Electric Cars rides on an accomplished cohesion of opposing sounds.

Calculated rock is the offset to synth and atmospheric blend. Such transitions lay a hook to place Midnight Flowers above being just another indie pop narrative – the overhang is interchanging and technically ripe. Songs like Black Water and Police Car jeer into guitar banter while tracks such as I Already Forgot Everything You Said and Glasshorse turn to the ethereal with vocal play and instrumental reverb. Alongside producer Bryce Goggin (Pavement, The Apples In Stereo, Swans, Antony & The Johnsons), the album is steered by an editing eye to tie it all together seamlessly.

Through the last year, the New York natives have garnered a growing audience through gigs with bands like The Antlers and The Walkmen. With an upcoming residency in Los Angelos at the Silverlake Lounge in July, The Dig has slotted several east coast good-bye shows in New York, Chicago and D.C.

What The Dig are missing is a voice to define themselves beyond crisp production and a dreamscape that rocks. Juniors to bands like The Strokes, The Antlers and Cold War Kids, they bare the brunt of comparisons to those before them and more widely known, and thus, may need to establish a way to set themselves apart.

That said, Midnight Flowers is a fresh second album from the young band that doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. The album will be released May 29 through Buffalo Jump Records.