Every story has a beginning, and for The Midnight, that beginning was Days of Thunder and the simple phrase: "Mono no aware". The band's succinct description needs little further comment:
There is a Japanese term: Mono no aware. It means basically, the sad beauty of seeing time pass - the aching awareness of impermanence. These are the days that we will return to one day in the future only in memories. How do we capture them? How could we possibly be able to fully appreciate them in the present? This project is our attempt to put time under glass. The Midnight is a marriage between a songwriter from the Deep South and a producer from Denmark who both live in Los Angeles. The songs were written in North Hollywood and Santa Monica over two years and represent the first fruit of The Midnight. This is our love song to our city and a testament to the weight these years can hold.
The genesis of The Midnight and the songs that became Days of Thunder began on a spring day in 2012 at a writer's room in North Hollywood, California. The strange bedfellows who were placed in the same space for the first time were Tyler Lyle, a singer-songwriter/nomad musician from the American South trying to make it in the cutthroat music industry, and Tim McEwan, a Danish expat who had seasoned experience as a producer, songwriter, and performer in his own right.
McEwan had done some initial homework prior to this meeting, finding an EP of Lyle's through a quick Google search and took an immediate liking to his sound. Despite the potential culture clash, Lyle's A&R representative - who set up this co-writing session - thought Lyle's natural lyric writing ability had the potential to mesh well with McEwan's knack for making chords and beats.
Just 30 minutes later, the pair already had part of a song written. That song was WeMoveForward, which evolved into an idyllic progressive house track that bears little resemblance to most of the music The Midnight is known for today. Despite Tim having some introduction to the "synthwave" style of music, thanks to recent exposure to the movie Drive and music by FutureCop!, it would take a little longer before they would firmly establish their own take on the genre. No matter - the two had to start somewhere, and synthwave wasn't even a well-defined or well-known term at the time. They had a song, and this unlikely duo was already starting to make magic.
They spent the next two years continuing to write, record, and define a sound. Somewhere along the way they gave themselves an actual name. After firing off multiple monikers - Lyle and McEwan found one that stuck - "The Midnight". In July 2014, the fruit of their labors was fully realized: Days of Thunder - a six-track escapist EP that evoked high speed chases on big city highways, nights at the beach, late nights at home buzzed on wine, and melancholic nostalgia for the past.
Days of Thunder starts the listener off with The Years (Prologue), a six-minute love story recounting Lyle's then recent marriage to his wife Anna. This opening track already showed the seamless blend between Lyle's songwriting prowess and McEwan's slick producing capabilities. The final lyric, "aimless and upward", is a personal mantra for Lyle that had previously recurred in his past solo work. After Gloria, a seemingly existentialist cry for answers directed to a female protagonist, and the aforementioned WeMoveForward, we land on the tile track. A staple that continues to find regular rotation in The Midnight's setlists, Days of Thunder is a high-octane synth fest that introduced the saxophone riffs the band would become famous for. Instead of praying to a sky or deity, Lyle finds the answers he's looking for with Kick Drums & Red Wine, leading us to final track, Los Angeles. An ode to the city that gave birth to The Midnight doubling as a goodbye letter, as Lyle soon moved to New York City, Los Angeles has become one of the band's signature anthems. Its performance at The Midnight's shows has a knack of turning the concert into a full-blown religious experience, with few dry eyes as everyone has their "hands raised like a gospel choir", Lyle chanting, "If we live forever, let us live forever tonight".
Days of Thunder was a shot in the dark for the then unknown The Midnight. There was no guarantee that this venture between two musicians from completely different worlds was going to work or amount to anything. But the EP gave legs to The Midnight and a foundation which the group could stand on. Its staying power is evident today as most of the tracks continue to be performed at the band’s live shows. Even WeMoveForward has managed to find its way to the live stage, performed by the band during VIP acoustic sessions during the Change Your Heart Tour. For many artists, the debut release is a launch pad, a way to get your name out there and have hope that someone will catch on to a song or two. For The Midnight, Days of Thunder was much more than that – it was the band’s testament to love, nostalgia, and metropolitan beauty – principles that continue to guide the work of Tyler Lyle and Tim McEwan to this day.