Hometown: San Ramon, CA
Label: Unsigned
Website: https:
Sounds Like: 5 Seconds of Summer, Cartel, The Summer Set, Ed Sheeran, Maroon 5
Genre: Singer Songwriter
“I saw Tyler Stimpson perform with a band called Place Your Bets in late 2009, at a battle of the bands at Slim’s that essentially introduced me to the Bay Area music scene. He was young but proficient, and I could tell he knew his way around a pop song. A quarter of a decade later, Stimpson is frontman of a band called Minute 2 Midnight, writing tunes that aim for the airwaves and, for the most part, would not be out of place there at all. The big star of Minute 2 Midnight’s debut EP Back To Reality is the fantastic “Tell Me,” whose urgent, ridiculously catchy chorus and surprisingly heavy guitars make it one of the best power-pop singles of the year so far by any Bay Area group. The other tunes on Back To Reality are fairly standard pop songs, not insufferable by any means but lacking the catchiness of “Tell Me.” But if they kept writing songs like that first firebomb, this band could expand well beyond the Bay Area music scene, let alone their native San Ramon”
Daniel T. Bromfield - sfrebirth.blogspot.com