Album Review: Midas Fall - Cold Waves Divide Us
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Scottish post-rock / alternative duo, Midas Fall is set to release their fifth record in the shape of Cold Waves Divide Us, a hauntingly beautiful, yet simultaneously stirring and bombastic collection of tunes.
The recruitment of Michael Hamilton on bass finds Cold Waves Divide Us to be something of a change of direction from 2018’s Evaporate, without foregoing the core sound of the band, rather supplementing it into a bigger and heavier experience.
The Midas Fall aesthetic of atmospheric passages and synth still prevail, but it finds itself blended with over-driven guitars and Michael’s dominant core.
Album opener, In the Morning We’ll Be Someone Else sets the tone; beginning with a collision of gentle notes and harsh chords, the tune builds and swells like pounding waves until, at around the halfway point, the guitars kick in fully and join with the keys to get downright ferocious. Elizabeth Heaton’s vocals here – and all across Cold Waves Divide Us – are haunting and otherworldly, reminding me of both Julianne Regan from All About Eve and The Violet Hour’s Doris Brendel.
Following on from that comes I Am Wrong, the first of the album’s three singles to appear, and it arrives with a variation on a medieval theme. Rowan Burn’s skipping drums and Elizabeth’s more urgent vocal gives this one a different texture to its predecessor yet, when the guitars arrive they supplement rather than overwhelm the ambience already established.
Other singles, Monsters and the album’s title-track sees Midas Fall exploring other avenues of their sound: the former being a mournful and introspective piece, in which Elizabeth bears her soul through a stirring vocal performance; the latter is a multifaceted, ambient track, a journey through the band’s creative process, all to the steady beat of an electronic pulse.
Point of Diminishing Return sees Midas Fall running with the electronic element, letting the guitars have a break as the synths take centre stage. The riffs still soar throughout this instrumental track as the band lean into their post rock roots.
Showing a more mournful side, the centre of the record finds the sombre strings of Salt, utilising a cello and suggesting some allusion to latter-day Marillion before the tracks takes flight; the cello returns for In this Avalanche, in which Elizabeth serves up a heart-breaking vocal in one of Cold Waves… more fragile moments.
The trio offer a choice of endings, depending on your mood at the time. You can go with the more upbeat Little Wooden Boxes, which is a full-bloodied epic, incorporating guitars and keys, and consider the final track as an extended coda. Or you can embrace the melancholy of Mute, with its ominous, almost John Carpenter-like, underscoring.
Other than collaborate with Rowan on the musical aspect of the record, Cold Waves Divide Us was written, recorded, mixed and mastered by Elizabeth - she no doubt swept up too, and made the tea. Such is the personal feel of the album that it surely benefited from largely being the work of a single creator. Both fragile and ferocious, here is a musical journey that will be a treat to retread time and again.
