Sticky pop hooks, mercurial arrangements, gleaming production, and live shows that are equal parts calculated performance art and ecstatic dance party. After establishing themselves in 2014 with a self-titled EP and full-length Again Weekend a year later, Super City broke through with 2018's acclaimed Sanctuary, a nimble distillation of their diverse pop/rock influences: the guitars are big, the synths are shiny, and the melodies are both. Heartened by Sanctuary's reception, Super City have recently completed In the Midnight Room, a stellar collection of songs that fuse at least six decades of pop into a thrilling album. While every Super City song contains multitudes, the pop instincts that they've honed over the last decade are front and center on several tracks. Getouttahere kicks the album off with swaggering fuzz guitars that wrangle glam and new wave influences into a giddy rush, capped off with a classic stuttering vocal hook. Hang Up cleans up nicely with rubbery Nile Rogers guitar riffs and sleek falsetto before the song absolutely derails itself with a stomping road block of a chorus that empties out into Jon Birkholz's bed of gorgeous synth sparkles. Out of Touch and Know It All, also featuring elastic funk with unexpected genre-defining left turns, boast the kind of virtuosic and playful guitar solos that have been incognito since the 80s. There are bright wisps of Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads, Prince, the 1975, and St. Vincent in their best pop songs, but Super City so completely chops and screws its influences that In the Midnight Room always feels crisp and forward-thinking. Knowing that the wide range of these new favorites will be elevated yet further by the band's remarkable live shows is exciting. With In the Midnight Room, Super City have certainly propelled themselves closer to perfecting their own genre of infectious future-art-pop.
