Burning Like the Midnight Sun

Really love this record. One of my favorites from this band. I'm a singer-songwriter and musician. The Choir's "sound" has always been a big incluence on my music. Keep up the nice work Derri and company!

::: Beautiful and poetic... there is a timeless quality to this album. Soaring vocals over a great blend of ambient guitars and memorable drums/percussion. The album's first two tracks are fabulous up front, but the album really settles in and speaks as a whole. Highly recommended!!... Definitely one of the Choir's best :::

What can I say? The Choir delivers another killer album! Love it!!

Simply fantastic. Melody of The Choir. Derri, Steve, Dan, Marc and Tim are just plain wonderful. I have booked them three times for private concerts. This CD / Album / Music shows how these guys grown and are superb musicians.

The Choir continue to impress me with quality music and lyrics that cause me to reflect on life and what matters most. This group is a standby producing great music worth listening to over and over without growing weary of it. This album "Burning Like the Midnight Sun" has a nice mix of upbeat and reflective music always emotive though with a healthy dose of lightness. The title track and Melancholy Ghost are great openers for the album but the rest of the album has continuous moments worth your time if you are a discerning listener.

The Choir's 12th release, Burning Like The Midnight Sun, finds them continuing to mine similar sonic textures as The Church and Cocteau Twins. The band has always had a knack for creating soaring, ethereal music, but on this release they take things even further. Part of this may be due to guitarist Marc Byrd (from instrumental/atmospheric duo Hammock) being a full-fledged member. The interplay between Byrd and Derri Daugherty (lead vocals, guitars) is oftentimes magical and practically lyrical. With a sturdy foundation from Steve Hindalong (drums, percussion, lyricist) and Tim Chandler (bass), the guitars are free to float around the structure of the songs. Add Dan Michaels (saxophone, lyricon) to the mix and you've got something beautiful. The title track is also the opener and it sets up the rest of the album nicely. Near the last half of the song, guest Christine Glass Byrd (Marc's wife) makes her first appearance. Her haunting vocals bring to mind Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser. Glass Byrd's voice makes a number appearances throughout the album and is always a gorgeous thing to hear. "That Melancholy Ghost" starts with the guitar panning around the anchor of the rhythm section fitting the lyrical subject matter nicely. The panning is like the unsettling feelings of a young broken heart, but there is a core in the drums and bass that lend a semblance of stability in the pain. Michaels' haunting saxophone dances around the corners of the track like the title suggests. There are numerous lovely moments on Burning Like The Midnight Sun. Sometimes it's easy to take it all for granted and get lulled into a trance, then something even more beautiful shakes you. An example of this would be the very brief appearance on "Mr. Chandler" when Christine Glass Byrd sings the line 'I cannot let you fly'. It's a part so small but the song wouldn't be exactly right without it. Lyrically much of Burning Like The Midnight Sun is about relationships, friendships, trials, triumphs, loss and rebirth. Hindalong has always had an artistic way of making a simple sentiment sound poignant. In "A Friend So Kind", about the death of a longtime friend, he writes "So now you've gone away/In a sudden gust of wind/And we're sadder than hell/'Cause we miss you, dear friend". Daugherty delivers the words as if they are his own. It's easy to forget he didn't actually write them, but on record, he owns them. The album closes with the lovely, sparse "Say Goodbye to Neverland" with it's theme of the loss of innocence, growing up, and moving on with your life. Hindalong has noted that for this release the musical personalities of all five individuals integrated just right. Adding Marc Byrd as a full member makes this very apparent. It also might be time to make Christine Glass Byrd member number six. The contributions the Byrd's make to The Choirs' sound is immeasurable. That's not to say The Choir lacked anything sonically on previous releases, but it's as if all the pieces came together this time.

An amazing album from an amazing band. My previous favorite records from this band are Circle Slide and Oh How The Mighty Have Fallen. This new album, Burning Like The Midnight Sun, sounds like a mixture of styles and elements from those records yet has it's own feel, making it among their best and that's saying something. If you've never heard The Choir this is as good a place to start as any and if you're a fan you'll love it as much or more than anything they've done. They have an eclectic alternative style and fully deserve to be huge.

It's either a bit of magic or a "spiritual gift" that allows an artist to establish a cohesive identity, and then bend and twist it for nearly three decades, ending up with an even stronger, more compelling core than they had at the beginning. For The Choir, this gift is flowing in spades. Burning Like The Midnight Sun sits right there alongside their best work; Chase The Kangaroo, Circle Slide, Wide Eyed Wonder and How The Mighty Have Fallen. Though the band has not been the members' full time vocation for well over a decade, the passion they pour into every song has never been more apparant. Derri Daughtery's silken voice is just as sweet as it was in the early 80s, though it is somehow even softer with experience. Drummer Steve Hindalong's poetic lyrics have never been better. Atmospherologist Dan Michaels knows just how to fill the empty spaces with layers of synthetic air or saxophone. Tim Chandler's bass is, as always, muscular and perfect. No one would blame The Choir for throwing together a rag-tag record commensurate with the expected audience that will work hard enough to find it. The band, however, can hold their heads high. This is among their best work, from production to composition to packaging. It's as if they are playing to an audience worthy of their best efforts. There must be something to that "Midnight Sun" after all. Fans of The Church, Verve, My Bloody Valentine, Arcade Fire, Interpol, Psychedelic Firs or Sixpence None The Richer.

"Burning Like the Midnight Sun" is now Number One on my I-pod. Love the Choir's music.

If you're a fan of smooth, infectious rock 'n' roll, you'll love this recording. It's my favorite of the summer (top five of 2010 so far), and I buy a lot of albums. As on previous outings, The Choir's sound is confident and inimitable. Everything here is magnetic, from the carefully-tweaked sonics of soaring guitar figures and well-placed woodwind lines to the consciously-groovy rhythm section that propels the upbeat numbers and artfully frames the introspective ones. In terms of the cumulative weight of its message, you'd have to be a philistine to find yourself unmoved by the memorable wordplay ("a prophet in a land of profiteers") and earnest call for love and mercy ("there is no mountain of virtue higher to ascend"). You will not mourn the loss of the $9.99 it will cost you to own this. If you're like me, you'll have a hard time listening to anything else for a while.