Earlier this summer, Belfast based songwriter Robyn Maddox released a follow-up to last year’s debut single. New EP Midnight-15 is an ambitious release for such a new artist, built around conceptual storytelling and a central narrator and taking inspiration from diverse sources including the shipping forecast, Golden Age Hollywood. Working alongside producer Darragh Tibbs, Maddox has incorporated a range of sounds and styles within the four tracks from searching piano to guitars crescendos and indie jaunt, with her strong vocals pinning everything together. With so much in the mix, we asked Maddox to break down the EP track by track.
Midnight-15 follows the narrator on her unintentional odyssey of self-love and acceptance. Her story begins at 00:15 as she laments a relationship that was too ‘Comfortable’ to last while a gentle voice reports the first shipping forecast of the day through her radio. Her sleepless night leaves her stumbling into ‘The Green Room’, a dream sequence in which she begrudgingly stars alongside her strengths and virtues in a poorly-directed film, abandoning her self-respect when her interest is piqued by a man at the bar. This leads her to ‘The Magician’, an alluring but egotistical mortal man who unsuccessfully attempts to charm her with his skills in card magic. Rejected and humiliated, he performs his most impressive trick; ripping her heart off her sleeve, and disappears. Finally, she meets The Devil at his seaside home, discovering her likeness in a sculpture he has created and titled the ‘Pity Party Parade’ and recognising his voice from the shipping forecast that kept her company during her sleepless night. They sit side-by-side on the shore, unlikely friends who have finally found peace in their isolation, enjoying each other’s company.
Comfortable
When I wrote ‘Comfortable’, I had just moved into a new flat. On my first night there, the moon was astonishingly bright, and it sat at the top of my window and flooded the room with a pearly-blue light. I spent many nights listening to the shipping forecast under that moon, which inspired the first character in the story. It was important for me that the songs were very visual, and I find that my producer, Darragh Tibbs, has a beautifully immersive, creative production style, so we worked together to try to transport the listener to the story’s various locations. His idea of recording the song as live piano and vocals with an audio zoom effect at the beginning helped sculpt the setting for this isolated, intimate ramble. I hope this song feels like how I felt all those nights sitting with the moon when I wrote it.
The Green Room
This song was inspired by Golden Age Hollywood film sets with hand-painted backdrops and phantasmagoria, juxtaposing these images to create a light-hearted bossa nova feel before the intense outro. I’m a bit of a method actor, so I’m actually crying during the outro vocal, which we recorded with the lights off in total darkness. Sleep and wakefulness blur, and it’s hard to tell whether the real narrator is breaking down or if she’s finally shooting her scene in the dream and the tears are just an act. We meet The Magician – whose ‘voice’ takes the form of an electric guitar – in this song halfway through the line “Hearing him talk is like watching paint dry”, characteristically rudely interrupting a song that isn’t even about him. These little moments in the studio where the characters’ personalities musically came to life and we all shared that reality in the room were just magic.
The Magician
At his core, The Magician is a simple character: he’s a caricature of a Lothario, and his egomania meant it felt natural that he would be the only character to have a song named after him. He’s simultaneously charming and impressive but arrogant and unremarkable, and as he doesn’t have an actual voice in the story, his character was illustrated by musical writing that was almost excessively flashy and derivative of famous performers. For me, the song was constructed with a lot of vivid mental imagery, such as the bridge shifting into half- time like a slow-motion sequence as he performs his most magnificent trick; or the shortened last chorus, disjointed piano, and clattering drums showing his clumsy exit in a cloud of smoke. The solo performed by the wonderful Jamie McMinn is The Magician’s reply to this onslaught of character-assassination and is as predictably ostentatious as you would expect.
Pity Party Parade
I had the idea for ‘Pity Party Parade’ while walking on the beach with my mum. Every beach seems to have one isolated white cottage, either dilapidated or inhabited, that you never see anyone enter or leave. I liked the idea that The Devil character could live in one of these houses; solitary but not by choice, and the song describes the hobbies he takes up to pass eternity by. He’s portrayed as this sort of loveable monster navigating and coping with predestiny, whose only companion is a dog, a creature of unwavering loyalty. The Devil is ubiquitous in Midnight-15 – sometimes you hear him reciting the shipping forecast clearly; sometimes his voice simply functions as texture, but as he is the catalyst for the story’s events, I felt it was fitting that he would be the one to have the last word.
This song is dedicated to my lovely producer, collaborator, and friend, Darragh Tibbs, who voices The Devil’s character. I have never seen someone put as much blind faith into what felt like a ridiculous concept when I first came up with it and dedicate so much time and passion to the tiny details that shape a musical universe. I am very fortunate and very proud to have made the world of Midnight-15 with him.
