Horace Andy - Midnight Rocker (LP)

Horace Andy has spent half a century making the fragile sound unbreakable. The tremor in his voice, the ease with which he slides between lament and blessing, still hits like truth whispered in your ear. Midnight Rocker, released on 8 April 2022 via On-U Sound and produced by Adrian Sherwood, feels like a veteran walking back into a familiar room and finding the light is better now. Sherwood gives him space, patience, a sturdy pulse, and that signature dub haze, and Andy answers with a set that ranks with his strongest late period work.

The partnership makes sense. Sherwood has built decades of deep, heady, bass-forward productions, always respectful of the singer, never cluttering the frame. Here the drums sit steady, the bass calmly authoritative, the keyboards and guitars flicker like streetlights after rain. Instead of chasing modern sheen, they root the record in craft and atmosphere. You hear the air around the notes, you hear the grain in Andy’s voice, and you lean in.

Part of the magic lies in how the album folds the past into the present without feeling nostalgic. Safe From Harm, a song most listeners know from Massive Attack, becomes something weightier in Andy’s own hands, slowed to a heartbeat, with the lyric landing like lived experience instead of a mantra. This Must Be Hell returns from his 70s songbook with more smoke in the corners, the delivery patient and cutting. He does not belt, he confides, and the production trusts that intimacy. There are fresh songs in the mix as well, and they sit comfortably beside the recuts, all guided by a moral and emotional clarity that suits a singer in his seventies who still sounds curious and alive.

The album is not showy. It is confident. Sherwood keeps the dub moves purposeful, drops and echoes that serve the mood rather than the console. When a guitar phrase glints or a horn line steps forward, it does so like a memory arriving on time. The tempos mostly lope, perfect for the way Andy phrases, and the choruses sneak up slowly, then stay. Turn it up on a decent system and the low end wraps around you, warm but firm, the way classic roots records always promised to feel.

Critics heard it. UK broadsheets and long running music mags greeted Midnight Rocker as a late career high point, a graceful, deeply felt statement rather than a museum piece. It also sparked a fierce companion set, Midnight Scorchers, released later in 2022, where Sherwood and the On-U camp pushed the dubs and dancehall flavors harder. Taken together, the pair shows how adaptable Andy’s voice remains, how easily it can live in meditative roots or step into tougher versions without losing character.

If you collect Horace Andy vinyl, this one earns its place next to the Studio One classics and the Massive Attack era touchstones. The Midnight Rocker vinyl pressing puts that bass where it belongs, and the jacket art looks right on a shelf, cool and unhurried. I have had more than one customer flip it over in the bin, clock the producer credit, and nod. If you like to buy Horace Andy records online, this is a safe blind purchase. If you are browsing a Melbourne record store, or hunting through vinyl records Australia late at night, it is the kind of album you play twice in a row before you put it back in the sleeve. And if you are the type to keep a running list of essential Horace Andy albums on vinyl, pencil this one in with a star.

What sticks after a few listens is how humane it is. The songs worry over personal stakes, community stakes, spiritual stakes, never loudly, never with finger wagging. Andy has been singing about love, survival, and conscience since Skylarking, and he still finds fresh angles here. Sherwood’s production lets the words breathe, and the band plays like a group that knows when not to fill the gaps.

Midnight Rocker does not try to rewrite the rules. It plays to Andy’s strengths, honors his history, and feels present. That is rarer than it sounds. Put it on late, let the room get quiet, and hear how a voice that has guided generations still finds new ways to soothe and warn at the same time.