Midlake

The Courage of Others

(Bella Union)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

Can I just say that listening to an album by Nebula and then suddenly switching to Midlake is sort of like driving a souped up convertible Mustang through some backwoods Arizona stretch of highway and then hitting a huge rock and flying through the air?

Midlake is not the crash, Midlake is not the final hit of your body on the heated tarmac. Midlake is the music that flows through your mind and body and soul as you fly through the air in slow motion. Midlake is the soundtrack to the life that flashes before your eyes.

The songs on this album are enchanting and beautiful, and at the same time fairly heartwrenching. The guitars, the slashes of distortion, the energy that is contained within the melodies keep this album from floating away and becoming something more ethereal, although the hint of that happening is sometimes implied in the wisdom and loss of the lyrics. Vocalist Tim Smith has a way of expressing melancholy that transcends the earthbound rhythms that are attempting to hold the songs earthbound.

I have a little trouble trying to decide, exactly where I would place an album like this. Yes, there are those similarities that you could attach to bands like the Flaming Lips or Grandaddy, but those float off in the distance between the touches of Neil Young and maybe Iron & Wine. There’s so much more here. There’s Scott Walker, there’s the heavy sadness of the Tindersticks, and then there are touches of an ageless sorrow falling against the music like memories of mournful '60s protest songs. Echoes of Phil Ochs and Mick Softley fall like heartbreak, and sometimes it feels good to be sad.

This isn’t a Sixties album though, unless you took that decade and shoved it through a thick '70s filter, mixing it up with strange flute solos and bizarre bursts of Americana that float around like the mellowest moments of your favorite prog rock albums and splashed with a nice bit of straight up Folksiness. The thing is, is that it is seamless, it isn’t a mess. Every song moves like some kind of pastoral storyline and when it’s over, you just sit in silence for a few minutes until you realize it’s done.

And then thankfully, you realize that you weren’t in a car crash.

It was just a dream.