Expect Cosmo's Midnight's 'Yesteryear' To Be One Of The Year's Biggest Albums

The end of 2020 is getting closer and it's got us thinking about what tunes we want to accompany us into the summer months. Thankfully, Cosmo's Midnight are here to help with that. 

The Sydney duo - made up of twin brothers Cosmo & Patrick Liney - share their second album, Yesteryear, today and it's set to become one of the summer's MUST have albums. 

Of course, tracks like Idaho and C.U.D.I (Can You Dig It) have already proven popular, with the latter landing itself in the Hottest 100 of 2019. 

The album sees the pair collab with some of the country's best up and comers too, with Ruel appearing on Down For You, Stevan on Ice and more.

“Our second album is about reflecting on the past with not only nostalgia but also an element of melancholia ~ all the formative experiences that we absorb growing up both good and bad," said the group. 

"It's an album inspired by personal growth, looking back on these experiences, learning from them and moving forward with optimism. Stylistically we have always looked back to genres our parents introduced to us growing up; disco, funk, psychedelia, alt-pop of the 70s and 80s. 

"In Yesteryear we have honed in on that, moving away from overly produced sounds to more organic instrumentation, focused on feeling rather than thinking."

What they're saying... 

Cosmo's Midnight have shared an exclusive look at the 10 songs that "show the trajectory of our sound and career". 

Snare
This was our first single on a non-indie label and still to this day is a song we feel is part of our musical identity even as we drop our new album. At the time we didn't know it but it was a sound we'd end up revisiting further down the line.

Walk With Me
Our first track to ever make a big splash and after all this time it's one of our most streamed tracks. Walk With Me was a real struggle for us, we weren't really used to writing songs with vocals as we came up with the SoundCloud wave, mostly making instrumental beats and remixes. We had no idea how to structure a 'pop' song and because of that Walk With Me ended up having a really interesting middle section that we haven’t replicated since.

History
After seeing Walk With Me do so well we were really feeling the pressure to put out another song that could top it. This song came about really quickly on a trip to Melbourne. We were visiting some friends and had a late night at some bad club and were all super hungover the next day. I think we were about to call off our session with Sarah Aarons but we all went in last minute, not recording anything until the last hour or so. When we did though we really felt we had something strong. History ended up doing really well and we felt relieved that we had made something that lived up to Walk With Me.

Polarised
Polarised started Pat down the journey of performing on our own songs. It was his first solo venture and although it was quite stripped back it helped us to see that all of our music could be completely independent. Polarised is actually one of our favourites from the last album and we took a lot of the fundamentals of that track and applied it to tracks like C.U.D.I and Unwind (from the new album).

Get To Know
Our collab with Winston [Surfshirt] took a long time to come about, we were still at a stage where we were super slow at finishing songs, but once Winston got on the track it kind of all fell into place. Get To Know ended up being one of the tracks that became the focus for honing in on the sound for our debut album What Comes Next. Even now I reckon it could exist on our new album comfortably.

C.U.D.I (Can U Dig It)
Written on New Year's Day after a party we'd gone down to on the South Coast of Sydney. We were hungover but decided to go to our sunny studio just to hang out and finish the beers we'd left in the fridge there. Once we got there though we started to muck around with an idea that ended up becoming C.U.D.I. At this point in our music we were using a lot of vintage synths like the Prophet, Korg M1 and the Minimoog so finding the palette for this song wasn’t hard. I think this song could only come about because we were in this relaxed semi-boozy state, chilling with friends in our studio. It really captured that vibe.

Yesteryear
The title track of our new album and my personal favourite was one of the fastest tracks we've ever written. Despite being the title track it was actually written quite far along in the album process. I can definitely hear elements of what we did on Polarised in here. This track was also Pat's first debut with a fully fleshed out vocal, in the process of writing this we felt like we had finally arrived and were writing music that we felt was truly ours.

Have It All
We wrote this track with the song writing duo Age.Sex.Location from LA. These guys were so lovely and encouraging, telling us to trust our ideas and that details come after the feel. The sessions we did with them were so fun, we wrote so many more tracks that we didn't end up using just because we were on a massive roll. This track was our second release of the album and we felt it as a way of showing people the direction we were taking musically.

Down For You
A big part of our second album was showing people that we could write more than just uptempo dance tracks. Down For You was a real labour of love and took so long to put together. Even though we got the initial vocal idea down from Ruel it took forever for the backing to fall into place as we kept debating about which musical avenue the song would go down. I'm glad we took our time though as Down For You finally came together as a fully fleshed out R&B ballad.

Idaho
Idaho is our absolute favourite off the new album, currently at least. One thing we really wanted to improve upon with this album was to have more seamless songwriting. For the ideas to flow end to end without obvious or shoehorned in transitions and to me this track is one of our best examples of that. It really feels like this homogenous yet layered sound from end to end. I personally love the lyrics Pat came up with for this one too, dealing with ideas of the looking for greener pastures and learning to be content with what you have.

Yesteryear is out now. Check it out below. 

Looking for more new tunes? The Green Room podcast host Neil Griffiths and The Music’s Jessica Dale have you covered with their This Week’s Releases series. Check out this week’s edition below.