Customer Reviews

Midnight In The City

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow. The Ruse has done it. This album is up there with my top 5 albums of all time. Buy this thing if you like epic rock that will lift your soul.

The Ruse has long been astoundingly popular. They have a huge following which has grown incrementally with each of their phenomenally successful tours(seeing them live is a great experience! Try and catch them if you possibly can).

They are a very cool,yet not phoney, group of musicians/artists, who take what they are doing extremely seriously. The fantastic end result shows in all the wonderful effort which they have put into their compositions. They give us a seamless listening experience which is breathtaking. Both the lyrics (which you can read in the liner notes--a good thing cause the lyrics are like poetry and worth reading!)and the songs themselves, sparkle and flash like a collection of beautiful stars lighting up the sky on a clear night.

That feeling you get, that you have gotten yourself something you will be listening to over and over, comes fast to you, particularly in the case of this, their newest and, in my opinion, finest album to date.

However I definitely recommend having all of their albums in your library. They are truly worth owning.

The energy behind their compositions, the intelligence of their lyrics which is rapidly apparent to the listener, but is not show-offy or forced, and the flat out brilliance of their songs, which are seamlessly produced and a wonder to listen to, afford you a profoundly fine and rocking music experience.

People love The Ruse.

If you haven't yet heard them, the way the songs are played, arranged, sung and thought out, reach into your heart and soul and you can't help but respond. I guarantee this.

Simply put, they are a great and dedicated band. They have something which not many bands have, a broad appeal yet also an amazing ability to let you into their world so that you can actually feel how they felt when they were writing and singing the songs. The songs which you will end up falling in love with.

All the greatest bands are like this. One of their major influences is U2, yet they are not copycats nor are they derivative. The Ruse has its own unique style, developed over the years.
Each member of The Ruse is great. The lead singer, John Dauer, has the ability to move you and even exhilarate you with his vocals. Yes! He has star quality. Lead guitarist Jim Bilus is famous for his prowess on the guitar. He brings the house down with his amazing craftmanship, and blows people who love great guitar work away. Yet he always enhances what is going on, and never tries to steal the limelight. The Ruse is a team effort all the way and it shows.
Mark Stolze on bass is fantastic as well. It is hard for me to express how evenly yet imaginatively he contributes to The Ruse. He is just so fine on bass!
Then there is the drummer, Jason Young.
If you have been following this group from the start, you know that Young, Dauer and Bilus formed the original band when they were ten. That was around 18 years ago. Mark. the bassist, was brought in around four or five years ago, through a connection with Jim.

Jason Young is the heartbeat of this band. As drummer, he shows his stuff on every beautiful track. He is amazing, as are all of the members of the Ruse.

To get specific, I would like to mention the opening song, "Beautiful is Gone". Try to listen to that one more than once when you first get the album. Then try to get it out of your head. You won't be able to, I bet. But you won't want to, either. It is a really great song, a good rocking melody with wonderful lyrics, and an absolutely terrific opener for this uniformly fine album.
The second song is just as memorable, and can be watched in video form on Youtube.com . I recommend you do check it out on Youtube because the production work on that video is amazing. You will fall in love with the band when you see them in action. The song, called "Collide", is going to take your breath away, whether you watch it, or just listen to it. A great epic-style rock ballad.
Another song I want to mention, although I love them all, is the final song on the album, the title song, "Midnight in the City". What a lovely, slow ballad; a beautiful stunner of a song.

This band opens all the doors for you. You just have to walk in, sit down, and listen once to know that what you are hearing is incredible, fine, beautfully expressed rock music at its best.

Thank you, The Ruse, for affording music lovers (of all sorts) a great experience by offering us this amazing album, Midnight in the City.

These guys are so good that iTunes chose them as Free Single of the Week! Check them out!

Because commercial radio is so homogonized now, artists like this don't get picked up and played on the air. I found The Ruse by accident via a surfing video that used the title song of this album as the soundtrack. If any music industry exec's are reading this, it's not always a bad thing for people to hear music for free. You spend so much time worrying about missing $1 here and there that you miss the big picture: freebee's often drive increased sales i.e., REVENUE! I liked the title song so much that I searched, found, and BOUGHT this CD. Then I bought another one of their CD's, "Love, Sex, Confusion". Never heard of this band previously because they aren't played on the corporate controlled radio stations in Denver and haven't made a big enough splash in the industry yet to get a tour date in Denver.

I have difficulty articulating the sound of any artist without comparing them to other artists, which I don't believe is fair but it's all I got right now. The Ruse has a sound similar to another indy band I like, Civil Twilight. But there's something more to The Ruse that I like but can't put my finger on. Maybe it's the American sound vs Civil Twilight who hail from South Africa, I don't know. I'd say if you like U2 you'll probably like The Ruse though they sound very little alike, if at all. They would get played on alternative/rock stations if the radio exec's were being paid to play them, but that hasn't occured yet apparently. I have no idea what the guys in The Ruse perform like on stage but after listening to these two CD's for a couple months now, I'm eager to check them out live. A couple of the songs on Midnight in the City are a little too slow for me, but that's just me. I think this band has a lot of appeal to the mass market and am surprised I haven't heard them on any radio stations yet. I guess that's why my iPod and Pandora have pretty much replaced commercial radio for me. I can find better music for myself than what radio & music execs force feed to the market and The Ruse is quite the find! Check out their sound wherever you can get a free listen. These guys will likely take off in popularity real soon. If you live in So. Cal. and can check them out live, do it. And BUY their CD's please. They are just starting out and need the sales. Just try to overlook the fact that music exec's will find a way to rip off the artist of most of that money and hope they have a good manager to fend off the wolves.