Midday Veil

"This band can be tough to categorize, but psychedelia is the overriding theme, whether searing and fast or slow and moody... Throw in Emily Pothast’s sultry vocals and an informed krautrock influence and you’ve got a total winner here." - OMG Vinyl

"Midday Veil... possess the spirits of the greats of psychedelic rock (Ash Ra Tempel, especially) ...Recommended." - Weed Temple

"Midday Veil... possess the spirits of the greats of psychedelic rock (Ash Ra Tempel, especially) ...Recommended." - Weed Temple

"Midday Veil is preparing to take a break from the live-music circuit to record their second LP with Randall Dunn, a man who's been behind records by other heavy hitters like Black Mountain, Wolves in the Throne Room, Earth, Sun City Girls, and a lot more. It's a divine pairing. ... Expect the resulting record to be nothing less than earthshaking." - Seattle Weekly

"Midday Veil is preparing to take a break from the live-music circuit to record their second LP with Randall Dunn, a man who's been behind records by other heavy hitters like Black Mountain, Wolves in the Throne Room, Earth, Sun City Girls, and a lot more. It's a divine pairing. ... Expect the resulting record to be nothing less than earthshaking." - Seattle Weekly

"That aesthetic has become magnified and honed to potent, psychotropic dimensions on Eyes All Around, produced by Mell Dettmer (Sunn O))), Boris, Kinski) at the analog-centric Aleph Studios. [...] Listening to Eyes All Around feels like a highbrow roller-coaster ride through hell and heaven." - The Stranger

"That aesthetic has become magnified and honed to potent, psychotropic dimensions on Eyes All Around, produced by Mell Dettmer (Sunn O))), Boris, Kinski) at the analog-centric Aleph Studios. [...] Listening to Eyes All Around feels like a highbrow roller-coaster ride through hell and heaven." - The Stranger

"Midday Veil...made you feel like you were seeing something special before the rest of the world really knows about it. It was a performance best experienced in a small place like Rhino but destined for larger stages." - Denver Westword

"Simply put – and despite our hesitancy to concretely detail any sort of “best albums of 2010? list – there was no more striking, affecting, defining, epiphanic and just plain awesome listening experience of the past year than that psychically provided and engineered by Midday Veil’s most recent album, Eyes All Around." - Revolt of the Apes

"This album robustly demonstrates that some of the best things in life, some of the best music even, are spontaneous… Here, Midday Veil shines through with freshness. Not only are they a new and different embodiment of themselves, but I would argue are a new face for psych music itself." - Foxy Digitalis

Seattle psych troupe Midday Veil, who just released a beautifully packaged, 180-gram LP, Eyes All Around, will be kicking off their West Coast tour tonight at The Know. The band's chief sonic architects, Emily Pothast and David Golightly, share a creative, physical partnership that is unbound by limits of space, time, and possibility. Through the band, Portable Shrines (the psych collective co-founded by the pair) and it's annual Escalator Fest and bi-weekly DJ events around Seattle, they create nights, or shall I say experiences, that combine both stereophonic amplitude with entrancing visual aesthetics which can often surpass your own imagination. It is easy to fall under the spell of Pothast's divine and heavenly voice that can cut through dense fog, luminous rainbows, the scorching sun, and the darkest night skies, sometimes all within the same song. Midday Veil skirt the lines of conventional psych rock, frolicking through folky meadows one song, and postmortem mantras and ritualistic rock the next, summoning the spirit of Portishead, right down to the sonic complexities and harrowing vocals, or late, great 90s post-rockers Hovercraft, or the vigor of Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." Truly killer stuff, pressed on 180-gram white wax. Dave Segal recently went deep into the minds of the band for The Stranger.
- Portland Mercury

Seattle band Midday Veil, the core of which is vocalist and guitarist Emily Pothast and master synthesizer musician David Golightly, have happily bear-hugged with producer Mell Dettmer (whose CV includes Sunn 0))), Jesse Sykes, and Kinski) for their widescreen and elastic debut, Eyes All Around. This three-way marriage of heavenly voice, humming drone, and wizardly recording makes the full-length a spacious but stunning, sensual yet cerebral, mutation of song and space.

Created out of her struggle in coming to terms with the car-crash deaths of her parents a few years ago, Pothast carefully put the elements of Midday Veil together with Stockhausen-taught programmer and analog synth obsessive Golightly. As a form of meditation and a manual on a way to continue keeping on, you can hear this ontological battle in the clarity of the vocalized tracks ("Anthem," "Divide By Zero"), but also in the mindful instrumentation throughout.

Just when you think, on the ten minute opener "We Are You," that this is another inspired blast of hipster bliss, an unsettling transference between the living and the dead, between the possessed and the objectified, creeps out through the lyrics. You can tell the two have been paying close attention to peers and heroes throughout their musical careers, which include putting together the Portable Shrine Collective's yearly Escalator Festival. They're tied in, and evolving current sounds from shallow pop irony into moving musical statements based out of experience and relatable experimentation.

Much of this creativity is assisted by drummer Chris Pollina and Timm Mason (from Mood Organ, on trembling baritone guitar), and live with multi-media accompaniment. They're involved in every aspect of their aesthetics, and trust artists like Dumb Eyes to help with videos.

In the combination of a very human voice with a wry, wise understanding of how machines work to create emotion in us, Eyes All Around can be easily compared to any number of ubiquitously cherished groups. It is a uniquely spiritual statement, though, and Midday Veil may be one of Seattle's very best next new things.

You can describe the band's music, but every time you try to claim checkmate on an influence, the album whispers distortion. Mazzy Star, yes, yet much more cosmic and demystifying; Pink Floyd, but with none of that band's burdens of male melancholy or aggression; Portishead and Stereolab, but no sense of weariness or pop art irony. Midday Veil have the art and authenticity of good psych rock, with none of the grimy regret of that genre's gummy-headed next day awakening. - Three Imaginary Girls

"Is this a mere psychedelic rock record? Is it? Or is it a work of spiritual technology designed to mindfuck you into heavenly submission -- a channeling ritual that forces the listener to confront timeless themes of death and rebirth unconsciously?" - Redefine Magazine

A couple weeks back Midday Veil turned the Sunset Tavern into their own psychedelic wonderland while previewing some of the new material slated for their first full length record. Midday Veil is pure 60’s acid psych reincarnated. Emily Pothast’s haunting yet groovy pipes sail over synth and guitar ecstasy courtesy of David Golighty, Timm Mason, and drummer Chris Polina. Sipping on a PBR was all I could do to fight the zombie malaise of the room, but it wasn’t long before Midday Veil had sunk their minimalist bliss trance inducing claws in me only to finally cause my brain to implode under the weight of their classic rock fuzz mind fuck crescendos, and pupil dilating projection light display. Midday Veil has officially become my gateway drug into local psychedelic music, so stay tuned for more. - Seattle Rock Guy

“Asymptote II” paraphrases the rhythm of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” and gives that 1966 classic strong doses of 21st-century sizzle; Timm Mason's ululating, horn-like guitar solo especially catapults the song into the fiery ether. The track ascends and blossoms spectacularly, adding layers of excitement with each passing minute; it recalls the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" in the way that each player appears to be trying to out-intensify the others. "Asymptote II" will have you tumbling endorphin-over-endorphin into higher consciousness. - The Stranger

“Asymptote II” paraphrases the rhythm of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” and gives that 1966 classic strong doses of 21st-century sizzle; Timm Mason's ululating, horn-like guitar solo especially catapults the song into the fiery ether. The track ascends and blossoms spectacularly, adding layers of excitement with each passing minute; it recalls the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" in the way that each player appears to be trying to out-intensify the others. "Asymptote II" will have you tumbling endorphin-over-endorphin into higher consciousness. - The Stranger