Cosmo's Midnight - What Comes Next

Cosmo's Midnight
What Comes Next
2018
Spotify

What Comes Next is the debut record from Australian electronic production duo Cosmo's Midnight. The album is a really free form amalgamation of different styles of electronic coming together in a lbum that is all at once exciting and fresh while also feeling a bit generic. Their sound is super clean, but it suffers from feeling really quite derivative. The albums opener, a straight instrumental track, gives you the idea that this might be an ethereal almost ambient journey, but the almost hip hop delivery of the vocal on the next song "LowKey" sucks you right out of that head space. The album will constantly vacillate this way, giving you one hazy electronica number to bliss out to, then pull in something more generically pop soon after. This push and pull makes the record feel like two albums, Even Tove Stryke fades away to the background on "Talk to Me" a song that is almost to bubbly and without any real edge. You'll notice this sentiment a lot on the record, it just is not cutting enough to really raise an eyebrow or make you immediately whip out your phone to see who the hell this is. There are plenty of loose summer jams on this album, but it's hangout music at best. Things really start to fall apart on "Where U Been" where the duo create this almost hippy trap style song with rapper Boogie delivering one of the plainest set of verses I've heard in awhile. The song really goes nowhere and does nothing other than put some hip hop on the album for some reason.

The world that Cosmo's Midnight set up with the record's opening track is so different from the one they eventually end up playing in that the shift is almost jarring. When they satrip out the lyrics the songs become rich electronic productions but =when they try to include lyrics it just becomes another track. It is almost like they find the need to put limits on themselves is when they fall flat. It feels like the duo is so interested in finding something to connect that they throw everything in. This all may sound like I am fully writing this band off, but deep down there is something to like about this music. The tones they find are really quite pretty and when the shift into the their more Bonobo-esque stuff it actually works. This record just feels a bit youthful making rather large missteps but making them with a wide eyed wonder that an album is actually happening. These guys have promise and I'm sure as they progress their sound will get more refined and pointed. For now, it's just not quite good enough.

5.8 out of 10