Midlake - The rebirth of American folk-rock

Had you wandered around Denton, Texas, in the early 2000s, you might have stumbled upon a house on the outskirts, home to a handful of oddly distinctive young people. You would have witnessed firsthand the original nucleus of Midlake, a group of friends who met at university and specialized in jazz music - recently taken in hand by the inspiration of Tim Smith, the unlikely frontman of an uncertain band, perched on the edge of a difficult decade change and facing the tricky goal of abandoning chord progressions and improvisation to interpret the impulses of indie pop in their own way.

The search for an identity of their own would always be one of the band's preoccupations, and of Tim Smith's in particular, obsessed as he was with his own songwriting tendencies and singing style, which, especially at the start, were extremely close to those of his all-time favorite band: Radiohead. Or rather, at least early on, one of the very few rock bands Tim actually knew, as he candidly admitted to having listened to "Ok Computer" in his final months of college - essentially the first non-jazz record he had ever heard.

It's with a certain naiveté, in fact, that the band's first work, the Milkmaid Grand Army Ep, was written and recorded - a sort of reimagining of Thom Yorke's band filtered through more substantial arrangements and a thicker sound, closely recalling Grandaddy, with those scattered electronic interjections ("She Removes Her Spiral Hair").

Emotional immediacy - evident even in this embryonic attempt - would remain one of the fundamental traits of Midlake's music, far more important and defining than the band's stylistic evolution or the reference points of the moment. Smith's songwriting is confessional, marked by a placid, resigned melancholy, entirely free of Yorke's post-modern pretension (the twilight stroll à la Rufus Wainwright of "Golden Hour").

And this defenseless, childlike soul perhaps finds its fullest realization in Midlake's career on their debut LP, the off-kilter and peculiar Bamnan And Slivercork, a playful psych-pop experiment driven as much by bright poetic flashes as by graceless quirks, a collection that is, in its own way, fascinating for its homemade (mostly synthetic) effects, which describe, with engaging naivety, the fragmented dreams of a child.

Fairy-tale images of hot-air balloons and invented characters (the estranging, Beatles-esque epic of "Balloon Maker", the sweet escapist melancholy of "He Tried To Escape", the childhood marriage of "Anabel") build an expressive pantheon that may seem too childish or sketchy to truly move you, but which delivers genuinely intense moments - for example in the album's most fully realized track, the elegant marionette waltz of "Some Of Them Were Superstitious", full of melodic surges, first subdued then sweeping, truly moving.

The childlike imagery of Bamnan And Slivercork cannot conceal Midlake's successful attempt to take on the pop song, at which they would excel especially in its most elemental form - for instance in the two chords of "They Cannot Let It Expand", transcended in the final soliloquy, or, above all, in the nonsense, drum-driven narrative of "Kingfish Pies".

There are uncertain, stumbling tracks ("Mr. Amateur"), others still too derivative ("Mopper's Medley", "I Guess I'll Take Care", which does show a nice arrangement, though) - you can't expect Bamnan And Slivercork to free Midlake from anonymity. And indeed, it won't, despite the album's demo reaching Simon Raymonde, head of Bella Union, who decides to release it (and this would immediately determine the band's greater success in Europe).

And it's with the same naturalness and naivety that Midlake's masterpiece is born, those "trials" of the legendary, nonexistent Van Occupanther, the fanciful name of a fictional character - nothing more than an alter ego of Smith's. The mythology that would later grow up around the album's genesis, a sort of concept album without a concept, stems purely from its content, a work of such completeness and emotional depth that it would seem natural to trace it back to some larger, overarching project.

Instead, The Trials Of Van Occupanther is also the fervid, erudite reworking of 70s records that Tim finds in boxes of used vinyl, the one-dollar bins – take, for instance, that battered reissue of “Rumours” that turns up even in the most unlikely record shop – all things that were, however, completely unknown to him. It's a bit frustrating, perhaps, to think that someone could take on the classics without having grown up with them – and a foothold for anyone tempted to think that it's all down to superior technical skill rather than artistic vision.

Instead the two act in complementary fashion on Trials: on one side, the essential yet richly dynamic synergy of the arrangements, elevated by a clearly greater command of production techniques; on the other, an imaginative, picturesque songwriting in the truest sense of the word (countless anthropomorphic metaphors – the deer throwing itself into the sea in “Chasing After Deer” – and Bruegel-esque natural vignettes of a primal life, reduced, or rather elevated, to primary emotions, among the mountain folk of “Roscoe” and the hungry, fleeing “Bandits”), narrated with childlike inventiveness and a moving sensitivity, with the finesse of a great Russian novelist (memorable the wedding-themed songs, the whitened, frugal realism of “Young Bride”, the overwhelming melancholy – yet still triumphant, chills of opposite meaning running from “We won't get married” to “It's hard for me but I'm trying” – of “Branches”, the tale of love's desertion in “In This Camp”).

Musically, Trials has all the magical lightheartedness (“It Covers The Hillsides”) and the abandoned romanticism (“In This Camp”) of the softer side of 70s folk-rock, the sound of “Rumours” and “Homecoming”, where the power of the imagery (the loneliness of the “imaginary scientist” “Van Occupanther”, a great Neil Young-esque track) gives the songs a character that's not just soothing, but immediately familiar, wrapping everyday events and sorrows in evocative meaning.

It's in moments like these that lines such as:

Give me a day full of honest work

(from “Head Hone”)

sound liberating and glorious, on a record whose dominant tone is actually brooding, a depressed ode that rises up powerfully in these triumphant final progressions, between indulging one's own rejection of the world (“Let me not be too consumed/ With this world/ Sometimes I wanna go home/ And stay out of sight/ For a while”, in “Van Occupanther”) and hard-won declarations of intent (“It's hard for me but I'm trying”, in “Branches”).

The Trials Of Van Occupanther marks both the critical and commercial breakthrough for Midlake (including a European support tour with Flaming Lips on the express recommendation of Wayne Coyne), though success would remain confined to Europe from the very start.

Still, this doesn't change the fact that the record represents, with absolutely no intention of doing so, a starting point for the revival of genuine 70s Americana, which until then had been confined to the acoustic aftershocks of the 90s, only truly becoming revivalist of certain sounds and atmospheres, vocal harmonies, lush arrangements, etc. in the second half of the 2000s (one name above all, Fleet Foxes, but also Other Lives, Grizzly Bear, etc.).

New passions and dips in inspiration

"We don't want to be accused of ripping off Radiohead. I think Radiohead are much closer to my natural inclinations than, I don't know, Jethro Tull. I listen to Jethro Tull a lot more than Radiohead these days, but I could write ten songs that sound like Radiohead before I managed to write one that recalls Jethro Tull. I want to sound more like Jethro Tull, but I just can't manage it. E' una grossa lotta

(Tim Smith)

This “heart-on-sleeve” confession is a good way into The Courage Of Others, the record that follows the success of Trials and Tim Smith's new musical passion: English folk. Swathed in the white tunic of a Celtic druid, Smith seems to have so thoroughly absorbed the imagery of his adoptive forefathers that he ends up becoming a character from the very worlds they conjured. It must be said right away: if Midlake's sole aim was at least to “resemble” Jethro Tull, they can probably consider themselves satisfied.

“The Courage Of Others” is in fact one long litany set amid the woods and clearings of medieval England: it all sounds limpid, skilfully interwoven; at times it feels like being in the enchanted world of Espers, with flute lines framing certain psych-folk idylls. The rejection of the contemporary that resounds in Tim Smith's words (strictly on the musical level) embraces the whole record, in a kind of ecologist call to arms: “Great are the sounds of all that live”, sings Smith in the opening, entrusted to the majestic melodic turn of “Acts Of Man”. The acoustic swirl of chords, embroidered with repeated hammer-ons and slides, recalls the constructions of Pentangle and Fairport Convention (“The Horn”). A reference that may mislead, though, because little remains here of the latter's guitar flair: the songs' design essentially relies on very similar solutions throughout.

What Midlake are after is not the design of grand sonic architectures (as with the other bands mentioned above); nor is it songwriting in the traditional sense, as it was on "The Trials Of Van Occupanther". The focus here seems to be on composing something as compact as possible, on repeating with enviable stubbornness an atmosphere of dark, forceful preaching mixed with a more inward nostalgia for a time that has passed and that perhaps never existed at all. This latter aspect was central to the previous album too: there, however, Midlake had managed to let it seep through the folds of the stories told on the record, rather than turning it into a kind of all-too-obvious manifesto for their music.

The band manage in toto to render what they have in mind as the leitmotif of the album, translating it into these powerfully paced ballads, in which the acoustic arpeggio is now accompanied, now overwhelmed, by the imposing rumble of the electric element and by Tim Smith's chant-like delivery. So from the initial impact, which can be intoxicating, with the liturgical antiphon of "Acts Of Man", one soon slides into repetition, on a record so committed to staying "composed" that the only track that tries to break from the rest ("Fortune", a sweet, bucolic folk tune) ends up feeling almost out of place. It's a shame, because for once a bit of fresh air comes through, even though the ingredients don't change all that much.

The variety of register and, above all, of song composition that was a fundamental point of The Trials Of Van Occupanther almost entirely disappears on The Courage Of Others: where the shifts in mood gave the songs' development a narrative shape on the former, on the latter that mechanism is used far less. The result is that one often witnesses something predictable, laboured, strewn with signs of evident artistic fatigue.

The band's following years would prove complicated, with a series of recording projects started and abandoned (but also successful collaborations, such as the one with John Grant), and long tours in which the band's instrumental hypertrophy on stage became a mirror of their frontman's dwindling artistic vein — until, in November 2012, he suddenly decided to leave the band and, with it, the new album, which was in the distant stages of completion. A "violent" choice, but not entirely unexpected given the exhaustion the band had shown in their last full-lineup performance, at that year's End Of The Road.

Midlake don't end there, though: Eric Pulido, one of the guitarists and effectively Smith's "second-in-command", takes the reins of the band, which decides to get to work on a new album.

The result is Antiphon, loaded from its very title with the surviving members' expectations of themselves and of a new career. Smith's ghost, in this sense, looms large and daunting, not only for his role as the band's songwriter, but also for how he had always shaped Midlake's musical style. For this reason, Antiphon has to mark a clean break with the past, the blossoming of the personality of bandmates wounded by the departure of their guide.

On the level of identity, the album certainly doesn't fail: a suggestive, nocturnal 60s psychedelia (the disorienting, insubstantial "Provider", with its soul echoes) morphs into chant-like crooning ("Ages") and awkward tributes to the past ("Aurora Gone", somewhere between Midlake and John Grant).

What results is a solid display of personal pride and a successful escape from Smith's shadow, but very little substance for the listener, with the loss of even the residual melodic content of the previous The Courage Of Others (the tiresome lead single and title track standing out in particular). With that, one can only wish Midlake all the luck in the world — while knowing that, despite the name, this is and will always be another band.

After Antiphon, Midlake vanish without a trace for nine years. Then one fine day, as in a fairy tale, keyboardist Jesse Chandler's father — an ex-hippy who in his youth had attended the Woodstock festival and breathed in all its atmosphere of peace and love — appears to him in a dream and orders his son to reform the band. And sure enough, here they are, back with For The Sake Of Bethel Woods (2022), complete with a photo of the 16-year-old father among the crowd on the cover and a title dedicated to the place where the museum of the famous festival was built. The wind of positivity that blew through those years runs through many of the album's tracks: from the urge to come together and start anew of the intro "Commune" to the obsession-devotion to the place itself in the title track "Bethel Woods".

Always a product of a certain rock classicism, but with a jazz background and a passion for West Coast folk, the Denton group seem to pick up where they left off nine years earlier, brightening the palette and trying to further broaden their horizons without denying their past, drawing also on the indie-rock drive of their early days. There's an immediate desire to break out of the ballad cage and venture into less trodden terrain, with tracks that tend to evolve as they unfold, like "Glistening", which starts out on the edges of funk with a sparse but sinuous riff before expanding into a new dimension full of ecstatic mellotron and celestial slide guitar, or "Feast Of Carrion", which rises from a soft ballad in the vein of Jonathan Wilson to take on the shape of a jazzy folk veined with prog, between flutes and CSN&Y-style harmonies.

The band's new sound appears reinforced on the arrangement front, with the elaborate drumming of the title track "Bethel Woods" and the sturdy pull of the space-rock of "Exile" standing out in particular; nor is there any lack of courage in attempting pop touches in the elegant stride of "Gone" or in the suspended, if slightly crowd-pleasing, atmospheres of "Meanwhile".

Midlake's past peeks through in parts of "Noble", a poignant track dedicated to the drummer's son, where amid soft synth beds some of the band's trademark emotional depth partly returns, as it does in the evocative crescendo of "Dawning". In the powerful, Grandaddy-like assault of "Of Desire" there's even a trace of the pre-"The Trials Of Van Occupanther" era.

Midlake want to outlive themselves; they know they're a different band from the one of 2012, and they do everything they can to make that clear, with the new look proving convincing too. Unfortunately, Eric Pulido's polite voice lacks Tim Smith's charisma, and the songs, however inspired and well-crafted, rarely manage to reach the emotional heights of the band's golden era — though perhaps that's no longer their intention.

If Antiphon was the snapshot of a band in motion, caught mid-lunge toward a new identity, For The Sake Of Bethel Woods is the posed portrait of a Midlake rediscovered, one that has metabolised its past and moved on to the next phase.

In 2025 comes A Bridge To Far, and Midlake finally find their lost bearings again. The album's strength lies in its cohesion: ten inspired tracks, carried by elegant arrangements that are never overdone. Hope, a search for spirituality and resilience in the face of life's hardships run through every track, leaving the listener with a sense of empathy and relief.

After working with John Congleton on the previous For The Sake Of Bethel Woods, the band once again turns to an outside producer. This time it's Sam Evian (Cass McCombs, Big Thief), known for his knack for crafting celestial textures: “A Bridge To Far” is accordingly enriched with harp arpeggios, enveloping horns, interwoven strings and breaths of flute that heighten the sense of suspension.

An approach already attempted on the previous album, but more focused here thanks to the more transcendent nature of the new compositions.

Midlake's sonic world remains firmly anchored in folk-rock, but purged of any contemporary reference. The clock seems to turn backwards, blending the vintage flavor of Crosby, Stills & Nash's harmonies with the formal balance of Fleetwood Mac and even a few prog echoes.

From the opening, auspicious “Days Gone By”, you get the sense of being carried off to a beach at sunset, immersed in a melancholy suspension that resurfaces symbolically in the title track. A subtle mysticism runs through the whole album and never fades, not even when the rhythm section picks up the pace on “In the Ghouls” or on the animal-themed “Eyes Full Of Animal”, all the way to the grand architecture of trombones and synths on “The Calling”.

The dark chase of male and female voices on “Guardians”, featuring Madison Cunningham, offers one of the album's most evocative moments, while the true peak arrives with the exquisitely refined “Within/Without”, where dreamy violins carry a whiff of Roxy Music.

The closer, the bare, ghostly fable “The Valley of Roseless Thorns”, has the thankless task of bringing us back to reality, leaving us with a warning that resonates like an existential question:

In the end, what was all of this for?

In the end, what was all of this for?

Midlake, who had also released the double single “Roadrunner Blues” and “You Don’t Get To” with John Grant on vocals, seem to have picked up the lost thread after Tim Smith's departure.

A Bridge To Far is a flying carpet on which to lose touch with the world below. And if a certain rock classicism mixed with mysticism and a dash of hippie philosophy doesn't trouble your conscience, failing to step onto this bridge between the real and the ineffable would be a slight, but unforgivable, oversight.

Contributions by Lorenzo Montefreddo (“For The Sake Of Bethel Woods”, “A Bridge To Far”)

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