The Freak Accident Photo credit: Amber Carson-Miller
Ahead of tomorrow’s release of Midnight Show via Nadine Records/Nerve Center Recordings, The Freak Accident is happy to exclusively premiere their catchiest album to date on The Big Takeover.
The fifth album by The Freak Accident, The Midnight Show, expands the known universe of what the San Francisco band is capable of. The heavy parts are heavier, the punk parts are punkier, the noise is noisier and the improv parts are improvier; while somehow simultaneously creating the catchiest Freak Accident album to date.
Ralph Spight (vocals/ guitar), Henry Austin Lannan (bass/ vocals), and Stark Raving Brad (drums/ vocals) have coalesced into a band that can and does go in whatever direction they please. The album kicks off with the tongue-in-cheek indie rock of “Don’t Blame Me,” which represents, “sort of the point at which the lineup of The Freak Accident became a band, slogging through all the humiliations that only people who are music lifers can relate to.”
This sets the stage for a wild ride: the synth-tinged melodic punk of “Fairytales”, some dark garage-surf on “Busted Time Machine”, some extended undersea sonic adventuring on “Gill Transplant”, the pop-song-turned-noise-jam of “I’ll Be Your Toilet” and the dissonant swing of “Down in The Dumps.” “Fairytales” itself, as Spight notes, “is an exploration of the Hallmark-card images of Christianity… Musically, I just wanted it to be a straight ahead rocker with extra synth noises. And to take it over the top, why not add a drum solo? A drum solo, who does that?”
The Freak Accident had an inside joke about having to play last at every show, which formed the basis of the lyrics for the title track. It became a concept album of sorts; twisting through a dystopian, Sci-Fi B-movie filter where religion, death, authoritarianism, codependency, depression, entitlement, and internet trolls are all intelligently parsed and skewered with biting lyricism and a healthy heaping of humor.
“The Midnight Show” is an album that will reveal new hidden gems with each listen. Strap in! This just may be your new favorite. Eye popping cover design by poster art legend ZOLTRON. This could be your new favorite album. Just sayin’.
“I think making The Midnight Show was when this latest line-up of The Freak Accident became a band and not so much my solo thing since this was the first record where this particular line up conceived the record from the ground up.
We saved every dime from dozens of small shows to make this record. We spent hours and weeks and months writing and arranging the songs and saved every dime from dozens of small shows to make this record.
I knew we had to get into the studio as 2024 wound down before everyone scattered for the holidays but it seemed like we needed more material.
Just weeks before we recorded I remembered I’d written “Gill Transplant” almost 30 years before for Saturn’s Flea Collar but then the band broke up and I stuck it in a drawer. I showed it to the band and they were totally into it. It hadn’t been played more than a few times and the arrangement was still sort of vague but we really nailed the second take of the song and it only needed a small repair. “I’ll Be Your Toilet” also had a long improvised section, some of which needed to be edited in the end.
A couple of the songs weren’t completely fleshed out but I think by the time we went into the studio we trusted each other enough from playing together so much to get through some of the sections that weren’t completely finished.
I’m really happy with how things turned out because the tracks sound super live and the band was really together even if we totally didn’t have the roadmaps of some of the songs completely in focus. There wasn’t much to add but it still took another half a year to finish lyrics, vocals and mixing but it all worked together musically and thematically even though we didn’t try to conform to any genre limitations. I’m really gratified with the results here and I hope people hear how much we enjoyed making this record.”
New music on the way? Pitch Big Takeover Exclusives.
