Reviewing: Noon Fifteen's Finish What You Started!

This is a new one for me: I’ve reviewed books, graphic novels, movies, even t-shirt companies, but I’ve never had the opportunity to review music before, and – boy – what an album this one is! When I was approached about it, the album was recommended to me on the strength of its often Halloween-ish lyrics (several of the songs brood with mysterious imagery of vampires, paranoia, ghosts, haunted houses, and spiritual isolation).

Little did I know that – where I expected to find a predictable anthology of gloomy, dissonant night-pieces – I would be delighted by an expertly balanced composition that juxtaposes the darkness of its intellectual lyrics with the velvety warmth of one of my favorite genres (prog rock) and the exuberant joy of one of my wife and I’s favorite bands, Lake Street Dive – a very specific (and frequently cited) influence to this phenomenal group, Noon Fifteen.

THE MOOD AND FEELING

One of the first surprises of this upcoming release, Finish What You Started!, is that (with the exception of the "Thriller"-tinged verses of "Feel") it hardly ever effects the languorously creepy or eerily subdued quality that its song-titles and existential subject matter at first suggest. Vampires lurk here. Doppelgängers prowl suburban bedrooms. Ghosts wander abandoned houses. Yet the prevailing mood isn't midnight in a lonely mansion—it's the golden hour, celebrating in the midst of a jubilant crowd.

Noon Fifteen have made a record about fear that positively glows with brazen defiance. It steams with summery warmth and cheerful, funky power that put me in a distinctly positive mindset, the sort that makes me think of drinking wine at an outdoor concert at sunset on a steamy June or August evening with cicadas buzzing in the heat-cripsed trees, and the cool breath of evening rolling in from fragrant cornfields. Unapologetically retro (complete with a hammond organ's cozy hum and swirling, bluesy keys a la Vince Guaraldi), and unstoppably enthusiastic, It's a kick-ass anti-depressant in album-form, without sacrificing intellectual curiosity or existential honesty.

That may seem like an odd way to introduce an album described as a collection of songs about imposters, vampires, haunted houses, and the many fears that haunt ordinary life, but this surprising marriage of sound and ideas is a delightful feature rather than a disappointing bug. Recorded over the course of eight years, Finish What You Started! was conceived as an ambitious concept album exploring fear in its many forms, from supernatural terrors to the quieter anxieties of regret, self-doubt, temptation, and identity. Yet what lingers after the final notes fade is not dread, but delight.

It has a surging, juicy sound (self-described, accurately, as maximalist) that calls to mind the influences of Yes and, specifically (an old favorite of both my father-in-law and mine), their keyboardist Rick Wakeman, whose own macabre-themed concept album Criminal Record (which we play every Halloween on our record player) feels like a spiritual cousin to some of these songs.

(Two of my family's favorite albums with very similar elements to

Finish What You Started!: Rick Wakeman's Criminal Record

and Lake Street Dive's Bad Self Portraits)

Like Wakeman, Noon Fifteen doesn’t feel the pressure to make their meditations on humanity’s Shadow-self fit a clichéd or predictable sound; his darkest works were often his most rollicksome, and where another band would use the theme of fear to emphasize discordant harmonics, wistful melodies, uneasy stillness, and minimalistic simplicity (and there’d be no shame to it: Nico’s The Marble Index does this beautifully), that is not at all the case with Finish What You Started!

For Noon Fifteen, fear is to be grappled with aggressively without hesitation or restraint. Far from wistful unease this album’s approach is one of operatic power and rich expressive might, and its ethos is serious musicians having outrageous fun with serious concepts, refusing to partition the weird from the wonderful. In general, Noon Fifteen's defining ethos may be their refusal to treat imagination as something separate from ordinary life.

Their songs inhabit a world where vampire films, haunted houses, political anxieties, failed relationships, personal regrets, and summer sunsets all belong to the same emotional landscape. The band's music suggests that fantasy is not an escape from reality but another way of understanding it.   

THE BAND, THEIR THEMES, AND THEIR STYLE

The Ithaca-based ensemble has long cultivated a reputation for stylistic adventurousness. Consisting of Mandy Goldman (vocals & guitar), Samuel B. Lupowitz (keyboards & vocals), Joe Massa (guitar), and Harry Nichols (bass & vocals), for over a decade this exciting, indie outfit has been extolled for its eclectic blend of soul, rock, pop, reggae, funk, classical, and progressive influences. Other reviewers have highlighted the band's "powerhouse vocals," "intriguing musical arrangements," and willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead rather than confining themselves to a single genre.

Finish What You Started! feels like the culmination of that impulse. The record confidently blends soulful grooves, earworm pop melodies, psychedelic textures, jazz-inflected harmonies, progressive structures, and classic-rock energy into something that feels entirely its own. Listeners familiar with groups like Lake Street Dive may recognize a similar refusal to stick to genre boundaries or restrain their exuberant symphony of sounds. Like that celebrated ensemble, Noon Fifteen possesses an uncanny ability to move between styles while maintaining a strong melodic identity.

Throughout the album, every musical turn feels purposeful rather than showy. A reggae pulse gives way to muscular rock-and-roll. Acoustic intimacy blossoms into dreamlike expanses. Funk grooves and soulful choruses coexist comfortably alongside progressive detours and cinematic finales.

Much of the album's charm derives from its rich instrumental palette. Hammond organ swells through the arrangements with a welcoming warmth, while jazz-flavored keyboard passages occasionally evoke the easy sophistication of Vince Guaraldi. These touches lend the album an inviting, nostalgic glow. Even when the lyrics venture into uncanny territory, the music itself remains remarkably generous.

The result is a curious and delightful tension: songs about monsters that make the listener want to grin and tap their feet. Fear and horror have obviously been associated with darkness, alienation, and despair, but Noon Fifteen approaches the genre from a different angle. The supernatural elements function less as engines of fear than as vehicles for exploring deeply human experiences.

The vampire narratives and haunted-house imagery often feel closer to episodes of The Twilight Zone than conventional horror stories, using fantastical premises to illuminate emotional truths. Fear, after all, is rarely about monsters. It is about uncertainty, loss, regret, longing, and the unsettling possibility that we may not fully understand ourselves.

This thematic approach aligns with comments made by the band throughout the album's long gestation. Previous discussions of songs such as "Easy" emphasized themes of confronting the internal and external conflicts that keep us standing still, while other tracks explore identity, remorse, and personal transformation through imaginative narrative frameworks. What could have become a collection of novelty songs instead emerges as something far more thoughtful and emotionally resonant.

THE SONGS AND THE SOUND

The album's diverse tracklist offers listeners a variety of musical and lyrical pleasures. The title track, "Finish What You Started," transforms a seemingly forgettable vampire film into a clever meditation on obsession and the porous boundary between fiction and reality, pairing one of the album's most imaginative concepts with Noon Fifteen's gift for memorable melodies. "Imposter" leans into uncanny horror, spinning a tale of a spouse replaced by a mysterious double and tapping into one of the oldest and most unsettling fears in speculative fiction: the terror that the people we love may not be who they seem. By contrast, "Easy" showcases the band's soulful side, marrying warm grooves and rich textures to lyrics about the personal and external barriers that keep us from moving forward.

“The Tick” -- with its acidic lyrics about a toxic, manipulative blood-sucker -- announces the album’s central paradox: music that is structurally restless yet emotionally inviting, where intricate arrangement and stylistic volatility never undermine the warmth of its groove. "Feel" (blending Maroon 5-style funk with "Thriller" keyboard flourishes) returns to vampiric imagery, using supernatural themes to explore emotional hunger and longing, while the comparatively gentle "Scared To" (reminiscent of the soulful best of Corrine Bailey Rae) gradually unfolds from intimate beginnings into a sweeping emotional landscape, examining regret, vulnerability, and the lingering consequences of words left unsaid.

Groovy and Guaraldi-esque, "Dinosaurs," a politically charged composition uses the image of prehistoric giants as a metaphor for destructive ideas that stubbornly refuse to go extinct. Rather than delivering a heavy-handed protest song, the anthem embodies Noon Fifteen's characteristic blend of intelligence and playfulness, wrapping social commentary in the band's buoyant mix of soul, rock, and funk.

The final song, “Haunted Me,” starts with a slow, soulful jam – using haunting and madness as metaphors for the lingering effects of a fractured relationship – interrupted briefly by a distinctly Wakeman segue (Wagnerian choral tones and shimmering chimes, drifting mistily around powerful organ chords, evoking Criminal Record’s powerful finale “Judas Iscariot”) – climaxing with a rollicking, coursing conclusion, whose layered vocals, strumming guitar, triumphant trumpets, percussive handclaps, and jubilant bells fuse together into a jubilant apotheosis of defiant joy.

In the background, the booming, baroque organ swells forth like a rising sun dispelling the darkness. When the jamming finally fades, the organ’s glorious peal remains behind like rays of brassy light piercing the under-belly of leaden storm clouds, bravely reminding us that our free will, our choices – to engage or turn away, to accept or decline, to worry or soldier on – are the indispensable solution to living in a haunted world such as ours.  

Together, these songs demonstrate the qualities that make Finish What You Started! so distinctive: imaginative storytelling, emotional sincerity, genre-defying musicianship, and a rare ability to make even the darkest subject matter feel inviting and deeply human.

The album's extended creation period also proves to be one of its strengths. Recorded over nearly a decade, these songs possess the confidence and patience of material that has been allowed to mature.

The arrangements feel lived-in rather than assembled. Vocal harmonies settle naturally into place. Instrumental textures are layered with care. Transitions unfold organically. The band's progressive instincts reveal themselves not through excessive virtuosity but through a willingness to let songs evolve according to their own internal logic.

For all of its conceptual ambitions, however, Finish What You Started! never loses sight of the simple pleasures of great songwriting. The hooks arrive effortlessly. Choruses linger. Melodies invite repeated listens. Even the album's most elaborate moments remain grounded in a palpable affection for pop craftsmanship. There is no sense that complexity is being pursued for its own sake.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

What makes Finish What You Started! memorable is not that it transforms fear into music, but that it discovers how strangely joyful horror can become when filtered through soul, funk, jazz, and the golden glow of a summer evening. The Gothic literary themes may initially draw this blog's readers toward the album, but it is the warmth that will surely keep them there.

In an era when so many artists chase increasingly narrow genre labels, Noon Fifteen embraces eclecticism with confidence and enthusiasm. The result is a record that feels both intellectually playful and emotionally sincere, equally comfortable discussing ghosts and heartbreak, vampires and self-doubt. It is a celebration of imagination in all its forms—and one of the most unexpectedly uplifting albums to emerge from such delightfully spooky material.

Music-lovers interested in experiencing Finish What You Started! for themselves can follow Noon Fifteen through the band's official website, noonfifteen.com, where news, music, videos, and release information are regularly updated. The album will be unveiled over the course of the summer and fall, beginning with the single "Imposter" on July 10, followed by "Barricades" on August 14, and "Feel" on September 18, before the complete ten-track album Finish What You Started! arrives on October 16.

Whether you're drawn in by the band's infectious blend of soul, progressive rock, psychedelia, and pop or by its delightfully imaginative allusions to vampires, doppelgängers, and haunted houses, these staggered releases offer an excellent opportunity to discover one of the Finger Lakes' most inventive independent bands as the story unfolds.