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In 2006, Midlake issued their breakout second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther. Steeped in laid back Seventies folk rock with subtle psychedelic touches, the album was an impressively anachronistic and rural glorification. Now with the release of their long-awaited third album, The Courage of Others, the Denton-based outfit drifts even further afield of their contemporaries. The Courage of Others is a dirge for the modern world, in sound and sentiment. Though more stripped-down than its predecessor, the album is nonetheless intricate in arrangement and incredibly dense in atmosphere and tone. Frontman Tim Smith’s vocals unwind with a delicately lethargic and melancholic tone, his rustic longing accented by the band’s trekking into the sonic terrain of traditional British Isles folk, trading in their Fleetwood Mac influences for Pentangle.
With flute intertwining into the acoustic guitar, songs like “Acts of Man” and “Small Mountain” carry the haunting charm of long lost idyllic odes. From the first gentle strums that open the album on “Act of Man” the theme of paradise lost saturates the album, Smith delivering yearning in a monotone chant: “If all that grows starts to fade, starts to falter, Oh, let me inside, let me inside, not to wait. Let all that run through the fields through the quiet, Go on with their own with their own hidden ways.”
When the guitar does strike electric, its force resonates that much more ominously. The shift from the gorgeously simple and short melody of “Fortune” into the darker, heavier push of “Rulers, Ruling All Things” captures the entire album’s juxtaposition of pastoral meditation with the weary condemnation of its loss.
For all its solemn density, however, the album does still flash brief moments of Midlake’s polished psychedelic rush. Songs like “Children of the Grounds” and “The Horn,” add a much needed power and crescendo to backside of the album without diluting the nostalgic sound the band spins.
The Courage of Others is a difficult album. Though beautifully wrought, it’s not immediately accessible through the deceptively ponderous musings and antiquated infatuations. These are songs of innocence and experience searching futilely for a lost world of Romanticism, and aching with the inability to return there. The payoff in succumbing to the album’s enveloping aesthetic, however, is absolutely transportive.
Websites:
http://midlake.net
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