Midlake, The Courage Of Others
Featured Album
The slowest of slow burners, brimming with sweet and affecting melancholia
Two whole years in the studio; the jettisoning of an album's worth of material; financial and emotional pressures that threatened the band's continued existence — Denton, Texas outfit Midlake have been to the heart of darkness making this record, and you can hear it. Their keenly-awaited follow-up to 2007's Promethean pastoral The Trials Of Van Occupanther is an unmitigated triumph, its sweet melancholia truly — and at times disconcertingly — affecting.
Inspirational touchstones include venerable Brit-folk acts such as Pentangle and Fairport Convention, but with its haunting flute and quiet introspection, "The Courage Of Others" also evokes "Isle Of View," a somewhat obscure 1972 album by Jimmie Spheeris that Midlake singer Tim Smith has often praised. Making subtle use of bassoon, harpsichord and auto-harp, and featuring layer upon layer of thoughtfully-wielded acoustic and electric guitars, Midlake's third album is the slowest of slow-burners, but one also expects it will burn long and true.
"Acts of Man," one of nine songs that begins with gently-picked acoustic guitar, establishes a key theme that was also explored on Van Occupanther: namely front man Tim Smith and / or his characters' need to retreat from the crowd and modernity into — as another song title here has it — "The Core Of Nature."
More than that, when listening to the spellbinding "Rulers Ruling All Things" or the heartbreaking feint at optimism that is "Winter Dies," one can't fail to sense a deep dark hurt at the heart of this mostly gentle and refined record. "I will never have the courage of others," sings Smith on the extraordinarily unguarded title track, "I was always taught to worry about things / All the things you can't control."
That's Midlake's third, then; another of those records to cite in that old debate about all the best songs being sad songs. It's a fabulous listen — just keep some Prozac on hand.
