Midlake

Whenever I was a child

I wondered what if my name had changed

Into something more productive

Like Roscoe been born in 1891

Waiting with my aunt Rosaline

"Roscoe", the opening track of the second album by Midlake, is a genuine plunge into the past, both lyrically and musically. Mountaineers, stonemasons, the figure of the ancestor Roscoe, pastoral villages whose lands have yet to be defiled by excessive chemical fertilizer use or polluted industrial runoff, conjure up an idyllic, arcadian world outside of time - a world that will serve as the backdrop for every song on "The Trials Of Van Occupanther".

Musically, on the other hand, "Roscoe" and its memorable interplay of piano, guitars and vocal melodies harks back to the golden age of Californian rock in the Seventies, poised between folk-rock and soft-rock, moving well away from the lopsided, lo-fi psychedelic (folk-)pop with which Midlake had timidly introduced themselves to the international scene two years earlier.

This sonic metamorphosis undertaken by the American band shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, though. Ever since forming in the late Nineties, Midlake had been searching for their true sonic identity, evolving gradually over time. After early shows built around lengthy jazz-funk-style jam sessions (all five members of the band had studied jazz at college in Denton, Texas), the group found a meaningful connection with pop music through songs written in the vein of the experimentalism of Radiohead (frontman Tim Smith's great, all-consuming passion), Björk and Rufus Wainwright.

Seven tracks were collected in 2001 on the EP "Milkmaid Grand Army", but the band's actual debut album wasn't released until 2004, on Simon Raymonde's Bella Union. Yet despite a few gems like "Balloon Maker" and "King Fish Pies", "Bamnan and Silvercork" failed to lift Midlake out of underground obscurity (the record, incidentally, was better received in Europe than in the States).

With "The Trials Of Van Occupanther", Midlake completely overhaul their musical coordinates. Tim Smith discovers the folk-rock of Neil Young, the songwriting of Joni Mitchell, the magic flute of Jethro Tull and the shimmer of "Rumours", entirely reorienting his songwriting in the process. But the desire for renewal seeps through above all in his lyrics. If the chorus of "Roscoe" drives the record forward through the yearning for some unspecified change ("thought we were due for a change/ or two around this place"), the following track, "Bandits", describes a fresh start. As a couple ventures out on a hunting trip in search of food, their home, left unguarded, is ransacked by a band of thieves. Stripped of their belongings, the two are nonetheless quick to start rebuilding their life with a touch of irony, beginning with the very animals they've just caught.

So upon our return, we found everything gone

Which for us was no loss

We started over with a rabbit and an ox

As with "Roscoe" and "Bandits", all the songs on the record are bound together by a shared thematic thread. Without ever quite becoming a concept album, the eleven tracks seem to extend one into the next, sketching out, verse after verse, the bucolic, fairy-tale world imagined by Tim Smith. The reality his characters inhabit is timeless, yet vividly defined in its landscape: woods, hills, prairies, and an unconquerable ocean throbbing somewhere far off, where rivers and streams die out, roaring their own epitaph. The hardships of winter, between frost and food rationing, solitude (both forced and sought after), and the inner conflict between the desire for stability, homesickness, and the pull of adventure are among the record's recurring themes.

Among the many characters sketched by Smith on "The Trials Of Van Occupanther", the most intriguing is undoubtedly the one who gives the album its title, Van Occupanther, protagonist of the acoustic ballad of the same name. He's a scientist living a reclusive life, absorbed in experiments that seem poised to lead him to a major new discovery: "My science is waiting nearly complete/ and one glass will last for nearly a week". Unable to connect with the other villagers, Van Occupanther nonetheless appears at ease only in his hermit-like condition: "Let me not be too consumed with this world/ sometimes I want to go home/ and stay out of sight/ for a long time".

Although the lyrical "I" is always a male character, several female figures populate the stories of "The Trials Of Van Occupanther". Two unhappy, pensive lovers are portrayed in "Young Bride" and "Branches", tracks that, tellingly, are sequenced back to back. In the first, the young bride is a statue-like simulacrum, petrified in domestic solitude, unable to move or bear the slow passage of time through the harsh winter. Yet the rhythm section pounds relentlessly, a violin softens the frozen forest, and the emotional intensity is spine-tingling: the drama of failed communication is translated into music in a masterfully affecting way. The same drama then resurfaces, in different mode and tone, in the placid ballad "Branches". Here the lover is lost in thought, and the man senses the end of their relationship approaching, without truly understanding why.

A love that seems tenderly reciprocated is at the heart of the next song, the last of this sentimental triptych placed at the record's core. A soldier, perhaps wounded, receives brief afternoon visits from the gentle Babette: she brings him tea to soothe him, while he dreams of marrying her and leaving the army behind: "I wanted to marry Babette/ and the weapons on my shoulders/ I'd throw into seaweed banks". But war rages on, a horn sounds high and clear, and a sudden, startling instrumental break crashes down aggressively on the soldier, who will in all likelihood be dragged north with the shifting troops.

After "In This Camp", the album closes with four short but no less intense tracks. "We Gathered In Spring" hovers between historical fantasy (extraordinarily long-lived giants once inhabiting the hills) and an estranged reality woven from acoustic guitars and ghostly keyboards. "It Covers The Hillsides", meanwhile, revives the pop-rock of Jackson Browne to tell of a desperate river journey in search of food, as snow blankets the roads, the hillsides, the houses and the pine forests.

I’m not sure where this river goes

But we have no choice but to follow

There is smoke in the sky over those trees

Let us hope they are kind to you and me

"Chasing After Deer" and "You Never Arrived" bring "The Trials Of Van Occupanther" to a mournful close. Their clear harmonic simplicity becomes a tangible marker of the journey of discovery the band has undertaken, one whose ultimate destination is music condensed around a warm, vibrant emotional core. Music that in 2006 may have seemed out of step with the times, yet remains, even now, incapable of aging or losing its vital shine.

"I think I'll head home", sings Tim Smith on the stirring, electrified gallop of "Head Home". In making this second album, Midlake truly arrived at a musical destination they could call home, and "Roscoe" will forever remain the monolithic gateway through which listeners can step into the secluded, magical world of Van Occupanther.

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29/01/2023