Emerging from the haunted hallways of New England’s underground, Midnight Psychic’s debut full-length album Heartache in the 12th House lands like a ghostly apparition you can’t unsee—or unhear. Released on March 25, 2025, the 11-track opus is a brooding, shimmering dive into post-punk melancholy and cosmic grief, built upon the flickering neon of ‘80s drum machines, swampy shoegaze guitars, and emotionally wrought lyricism that strikes deep below the skin.
Formed in early 2022 by Connecticut duo Jayson Munro and George Moore, Midnight Psychic has already carved a niche that feels like forgotten VHS tapes and burnt-out mall lights somehow learned to cry and make music. Describing their sound as “goth rock inspired by abandoned shopping malls, clown paintings, and window blinds,” the band’s surreal aesthetic is more than just an artistic gimmick—it’s the sonic world they inhabit, where decay is beautiful and sorrow feels strangely empowering.
At its core, Heartache in the 12th House is a concept album that draws heavily on the astrological symbolism of the 12th house: the space of secrets, endings, hidden grief, and spiritual reckoning. It’s an emotional purgatory rendered in reverb and minor chords, where each song feels like a ritual, a release, or maybe just a desperate voicemail from the void.
Opener “Still Life” sets the tone with hypnotic bass pulses and a drum machine that clicks with eerie precision, like the tick of a clock that’s long outlived its usefulness. Munro’s vocals bleed into the walls like fog, not so much leading the track as haunting it. This is a world where nothing is urgent, but everything is ending—and it sounds exquisite.
Tracks like “You Should Move On” and “Mixtape” reveal Midnight Psychic’s knack for emotional ambivalence. There’s heartache, sure, but there’s also a defiant groove, a sardonic wink buried beneath layers of fuzz and flickering synths. “You Should Move On” in particular feels like a breakup song that’s also a dance-floor banger, letting you mourn and move at the same time.
Then comes “String of Fate,” a track that twists shoegaze textures into something tighter, more fated. It’s where Moore’s doom-loop basslines lock in, summoning a sense of inevitability, like every beat is dragging you closer to the end of something beautiful. Munro’s guitar bleeds and burns, while his voice—equal parts Ian Curtis and modern-day spectral crooner—threads the soundscape with emotional shrapnel.
In the eye of this storm is “Aubree’s Dance,” a delicate, mysterious instrumental that arrives like a lullaby in the middle of a séance. Named after Munro’s newborn daughter, it’s a pause in the darkness—fleeting, fragile, and necessary. It also acts as a surreal emotional pivot, after which the album begins to unravel in more fragmented, spectral directions.
The back half of the album feels like a descent. “Purgatory” and “Iron Age” ache with existential weight, drenched in slowcore guitars and distant synths that could’ve been lifted from an abandoned Depeche Mode session. “Puppet Master” pulls taut at the idea of agency and control, while “Suburbination” captures the uncanny horror of normalcy gone wrong—white fences and empty eyes under sodium lights.
Closing track “Wormwood” is an epilogue in fire and ash. Named after the star of biblical doom, the track is a whispered apocalypse. It doesn’t explode; it dissolves. Midnight Psychic doesn’t end the album on a high note. They end it in a slow fade, the musical equivalent of a black-and-white TV set powering down, one pixel at a time.
Throughout Heartache in the 12th House, Midnight Psychic commits to mood, texture, and narrative with surgical precision. Munro’s guitar—acid-soaked, chaotic, and elegant—is the ghost in the machine, while Moore’s bass provides the gravitational pull that keeps it all from floating into oblivion. It’s goth rock, yes. But it’s also post-rock, shoegaze, and something newer—something crawling quietly out of grief and into something brighter, or at least bolder.
With their cinematic sonic vision, Midnight Psychic have summoned not just an album, but a world. A world where emotional darkness isn’t a burden but a muse. A world where heartbreak dances with synths and forgotten gods hide in neon shadows. If this is what the 12th House sounds like, you’ll want to stay lost in it.
