Donewaiting.com and Milk At Midnight Do A Double

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on May 12, 2005 5:40PM

For a while now, Chicagoist has been knocking around the idea of forming a band (Rachelle and The Typos?) and releasing an album. Since we couldn’t even manage to form a summer league softball team, that’s probably not going to happen. So we’ll just contend ourselves with releases from more organized sites like donewaiting.com.

Started in Columbus, OH, the donewaiting.com staff of nine writers covers the local music scenes of several cities, including Chicago. The site’s first album is a split disc with new songs from Columbus bands Tiara and Miranda Sound. Tankboy, the site’s Chicago writer, has organized a local record release party for the disc at Subterranean this Friday, featuring The Miranda Sound. Local band Milk at Midnight will also be performing that evening and celebrating the release of its new EP Letter Bombs and Holidays.

We’ve been listening to both of these discs and digging them quite a bit. The Miranda Sound manages to cram lots of clever wordplay (“You’re making a mess/we’re making amends”) into their under-three-minute pop songs but also aren’t afraid to stretch out a bit with a cello here and a five minute-plus rumination on identity there (“My Surname Is An Airplane”). Milk at Midnight’s EP is the kind of album we love: one that reveals itself a little more on each listen. The characters in these songs are in a constant struggle between optimism and pessimism and the music reflects that. Plus, it’s exciting to hear a banjo used outside of the alt-country genre especially when its the perfect counterpoint to fuzzed-up guitars (“Never Liked It Here Much Anyway”).

The Cells and Rock Star Club round out the bill for this double release party that starts at 9 PM Friday. You can hear a sample track from donewaiting.com’s disc here and download tracks from Milk at Midnight at their website.