I entered this world on June 18, 1978 to a first-time mother and father who had just wrapped up their senior year of college. Two relatively green and excited kids took the plunge and married just before my birth, and entered their lives together with only the earnest naivety young love affords. I still occasionally flip through the old photo albums from the early part of their courtship, Dad a bonafide hippie fraternity boy, and Mom a beautiful and intelligent early graduate. Those grainy photos, perhaps, serve as the only communicators of the entire mid 1970′s cultural landscape for me. This is visually, of course. The first two years of my life are well documented in fuzzy polaroids of wood-paneled walls and dusty green shag carpeting. My brain swells with visual signifiers of times I simply cannot remember on my own. Sometimes we desperately need those cultural crutches. Time erodes so quickly and without distinct visual and musical thumbprints, our vertical connection to history may very well erode with it. In addition to these ethereal connections, musical touchstones become incredibly important in an anthropological sense. My father uniquely gifted me one album each Christmas, and with each new classic rock album, my worldview, musically, developed further. One year it was Jethro Tull, another, The Who. BTO, Yes, Foghat, James Gang, Traffic, Jackson Browne, and Floyd are several others I remember opening up and then devouring for the next three months respectively. Much like those grainy photographs are physical artifacts of a culture I only partly lived in, these albums became a part of me, and regardless of whether or not these seminal bands were around by the time I opened up the Christmas gift, they play an integral role in my life governance, philosophy, and general musical taste. In much the same way, Midlake’s idyllic and progressive The Trials of Van Occupanther, to many, serves as a canonical record and one that will naturally be a reference point when criticizing The Courage of Others. For me, however, I point back to the particular bands that shaped my childhood. Jethro Tull and Yes were ten times more important to me than Fleetwood Mac, and in that vein, I calmly make the claim that the Denton, Texas quintet’s newest effort is worlds above Van Occupanther, in the sense that it moves me; it’s a warm blanket of Celtic sound and auditory imagery. It’s mindblowing in every sense of the word, particularly because it is an album I’ll be able to pay my father back with. Next Christmas, he’ll be opening The Courage of Others and a son and father connection will once again flourish. Aqualung, ironically, was the last album I remember him leaving underneath the Christmas tree. It is here that the review begins.
The album’s sound is where fan polarization is set to occur. Guitarist, Eric Pulido, said in an interview at Under the Radar (about the album’s sound differences to VO), “That’s a tough one. I would say that this one is a bit more influenced by the British folk era, so a bit darker and heavier than VO. If you’re into that, I think you’ll dig it more…if not, you won’t.” Bingo. The first ringing endorsement is how much larger in scope and inherently dark The Courage of Others is. Celtic and mid-60′s British folk erupts heavily from top to bottom. “Acts of Man” is the first leaked single, and pronounces heavily the overall tone and more earthy and mystical aura that satiates listeners. Gently fingerpicked dueling guitars hearken back to the folky elements of Yes and Jethro Tull. Multiple part harmonies launch the vocal tilt from calming to cathartic quickly. Soaring choruses and gorgeously brooding melodies are quite striking, to say the least. In tracks like “Winter Dies” and “The Horn,” the omnipresent piano arrangements from Van Occupanther are completely rejected in favor of guitar-driven soloing and background fills. In the title track, flutes and rolling synths bleed into a solo wicked and warbly enough to drive all aspects of VO out the window. The band has matured, and this record clearly and emphatically pronounces that.
One of the brilliant aspects of Van Occupanther was that vocalist Tim Smith drew comparisons to Thom Yorke without sacrificing the unique integrity of the band’s lofty sound. In “Roscoe,” I hear early Radiohead and have for years. To keep the tacky analogy in play, The Courage of Others is Midlake’s OK Computer. It marks a progression that began with the jazzy underpinnings of Bamnan and Silvercork (2004) and through the classic rock revivalist beauty of The Trials of Van Occupanter and aptly ends with a blossoming conglomeration of roots-based British styles, mature and filled to the brim with euphony. “Bring Down” evokes similar breathtaking tension to the final three minutes of “Paranoid Android,” and, to me, situates the climactic peak sonically. The harmonies are stuffed with depth emotionally, and the sadness is its beauty. Perhaps the Radiohead comparisons are trite here, as this album hits me with as much vigor and wealth as any I’ve heard in years. As a British literature teacher, I teach kids about the early Celtic tribes and the origins of lyric poetry and medieval romance. These styles are all kind of captured here into something we’ve all heard before, but rarely done so effectively.
Thematically, Midlake once again draws from the well of the past, and in doing so, beautifully augments the earthy tones the music is emitting underneath. Midlake moves away from the central late-nineteenth centry link that Van Occupanther weaved through, but ironically, the sound itself probably throws back more accurately to the past. Images of man’s isolation, harvest, nature, and more pastoral oeuvres are explored throughout the album. Moments of warmth sprinkle atop motifs of despair and barren wilderness. The conceptual break allows each track to breath a bit more here, and the link develops naturally without force. The moments of more instense growl, particularly in “The Horn” and “Small Mountain” juxtapose the sullen balladry at work in “Fortune,” for example. A central organic vibe pulses through the album lyrically, but at no point does it drown into monotony. Not even close.
So how can I possibly speak in such lofty diction about an album I’ve only spent two weeks courting? I suppose it goes back to those pivotal moments of youth where music did more to age me than hormones ever could. The tribal and mystical ramblin’ man sounds of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung lulled me to sleep at night for many years, and it’s almost as if Midlake has produced the album I’ve been waiting to hear for nearly a decade. This album is sprawling, enigmatic and jarring in all of the ways it should be. Perhaps our best classic rock revivalists are doing their best to create their own niche, one of canonical proportions. You’re a silly person if you’re not buying the album immediately on February 2nd. To the fans of Van Occupanther, I get it. You can have your Midlake favorite. To me, however, this is musical perfection, largely because it’s like they crawled into my musical wheelhouse and carbon copied everything I love. Surely, some of you are going to find equal enjoyment. Included below (for comparative purposes) are “Acts of Man” and Van Occupanther‘s “Roscoe.”
