Little Red

Midnight Remember - Vinyl Edition

By popular demand we have brought out this hugely successful album on vinyl. But hurry as stocks are limited.

Melbourne's Little Red have been away a while, growing up, growing down, tasting the sweet and the bittersweet in equal measures. The band now returns with the historically 'difficult' second album, but in this particular case they have delivered an album that is truly a quantum leap in songwriting and production.

It is an inverse manifestation of the natural rock'n'roll order that stumps so many. That is not to denigrate the band's scorching 2008 debut album Listen to Little Red - a landmark debut record that crashed the ARIA Top 30, spawned radio singles Coca Cola, Witchdoctor and Waiting, made countless critics' Album of the Year listings and catapulted the band from the backblocks of Melbourne to a must-have fixture on any major music festival in Australia.

Little Red's stunning evolution on this new opus, Midnight Remember, has seen the band explore the art of writing and curating songs with a passion remarkable for a band that has already been commonly celebrated for their musical forays into pop-guitar's golden age. The sprawl of musical influences is coherently sewn together not just by a widescreen approach to the arrangements and overall production, but by lyrical inspirations that coincidentally but markedly point to life lived and not imagined.

"One of our goals with this album, was to convey clearly and honestly our personal feelings and viewpoints on the world, relationships, parties, anything really. I guess it just comes with getting older," says Quang Dinh, he of bass and vocals.

"There is more life awareness in this one; I feel somewhere in your twenties you get that awareness of mortality - you see the bottom of the wine bottle, so to speak, and the moments become more precious," adds Dominic Byrne, singer and vocalist who has extended his range considerably on Midnight Remember.

The quintet decamped to the peaceful environs of the Central Coast's Grove Studios in April this year with producer Scott Horscroft (Presets, Panics). It was ultimately a telling partnership - together they lived and breathed every song until the whole thing sounded more 3D than James Cameron's latest endeavor. Days became nights became days, as each song was questioned and improved on. There was already a very clear resolve on the band's behalf to make the songs the absolute best they could be, but Horscroft's guiding hand perfectly brought the band's already well-fuelled ambitions to life.

"Three years ago we were experimenting with more dance-like grooves but we weren't good enough musicians to pull it off. It wasn't until we had Scott producing that we nailed it," admits Hartney. "Scott has a really detailed ear, he was constantly tweaking the sounds and helped us decide which way to go," Byrne chimes in.

Next, the hallowed studios at Big Jesus Burger beckoned and team Little Red re-calculated the GPS to Sydney for the mixing process with Horscroft. Songs were again pored over, and this sophomore effort was sculpted to its near-final shape. The results speak for themselves and tellingly this collection of tunes still drip with energy and/or heart-on-plate honesty in true Little Red style, but there is also an undeniable technical leap into a hyperspace that takes the band well into the modern age. You are as likely to hear echoes of Phoenix to The Pogues, early U2 to MGMT, with lashings of Bob Dylan and his erudite prose seeping through.

Little Red are back and they're no longer in black and white. No sir, now they're alive with all the colour in the night.

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  Listen To Little Red
  

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  Midnight Remember