Midlake
The Courage Of Others
(Speak N Spell)

Midlake’s 2006 album The Trials of Van Occupanther – the band’s second record, and the one that brought them to prominence – was an interesting beast. Building on the work of Iron & Wine, Great Lake Swimmers, Red House Painters et al, it was one of the first albums to take the nascent genre of nu-folk into the charts, taking influences from traditional Southern folk as well as more modern artists like Fleetwood Mac and, particularly, REM circa Fables of the Reconstruction.

But it also brought modern influences to that sound, setting quietly mournful lyricism and two or three-part harmonies against modern production and instrumentation, thus setting up an interesting tension between past and present, nostalgia and progress. Lead single ‘Roscoe’ was a perfect summation of the album’s mood, a lament for simpler times – “The village used to be all one really needs / Now it's filled with hundreds and hundreds of chemicals” – rendered in a quiet, pastoral style but built around analogue synth and electric guitar lines. The album’s sound was innovative and compelling, a moody Modern gothic.

Three years later, the musical landscape into which the band release Van Occupanther’s follow-up, The Courage of Others, is a markedly different one. Nu-folk is a commercially viable genre, with Fleet Foxes in the Top 40 and Bon Iver emerging from his mountain cabin with a surprise hit in For Emma, Forever Ago. The ship has sailed; are Midlake going to be able to swim out and catch a ride?

After a couple of listens to this record, you’d have to say no, and it’s hard not to be disappointed. At first listen, The Courage of Others comes across like Van Occupanther shorn of its more interesting bits. The idiosyncratic instrumentation that characterised that album and its predecessor Bamnan And Silvercork remains, but the balance on this album has been shifted markedly in favour of traditional acoustic sounds, with singer Tim Smith’s recorder and flute particularly prominent throughout. The synths that surfaced regularly on the first two records are nearly absent. Even when contemporary instruments are used, they’re rarely given much latitude – an electric guitar sketches out a melody for a couple of bars on ‘Winter Dies’, but is quickly snuffed out, a pattern that’s repeated throughout the record. Even when a solo is allowed to stretch – like on the title track – it’s buried so deep in the mix that its impact is dulled.

Admittedly, the very nature of the music – quiet, understated, sombre – means that this is the sort of record that doesn’t really grab you immediately, and repeated listens do improve matters somewhat. Still, the abiding sense is that in embracing folk traditionalism, Midlake are slowly abandoning what set them apart from mock-medieval pastiche in the first place. The result is a record that’s pretty, sure, but also largely one-paced and unremarkable. It’s a disappointing effort from a band who are capable of much, much more.

Tom Hawking