Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 12/06/06
Label: Bella Union

Many column inches have recently been dedicated on the apparent vogue for '70s soft rock. Centering on the success of London's tongue-in-cheek Guilty Pleasures club night, as well as sizeable hits for both Orson and The Feeling, many in the press are sniffing for a revival of Supertramp, The Eagles and The Doobie Brothers. Sort of easy listening meets "Saturday Night Fever". So far, so tacky.

Expect Midlake to make that list sometime soon, if but for entirely different reasons. This Texan five-piece certainly invoke comparisons with the titans of So Cal FM rock - most specifically Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, the Beach Boys and Blue Oyster Cult. The classic opening riff from the latter's "Don't Fear The Reaper" threatens to unleash itself in almost half of these wonderful songs. However, while pinpointing such musical influences is easy enough, a scan of the lyric sheet reveals Midlake's '70s obsession is actually about a hundred years out. The era they hark back toward is 19th, not 20th century.

Like Sufjan Stevens (another obvious comparison) with "The Trials Of Van Occupanther" they have created a magical world of their own. A vision of the present through the eyes of the past, rooted in neither urban nor country music. "The village used to be all one really needs," testifies Tim Smith on the opening track. "(It's now) filled with hundreds and hundreds of chemicals that mostly surround you, you wish to flee but it's not like you, so listen to me." This is the howl of a life gone by. Even the cryptic sleeve (depicting two dressed-up figures in a forest, one of them, presumably the Occupanther, resembling a cat) implies some sort of mythical fantasy.

Such dislocation - of abject horror with the modern world - resonates. "We Gathered In Spring" takes the perspective of a reincarnated soul or ghost ("On a clear day I can see my old house, and my wife in the front yard talking with the friends"); the heartbreaking "Young Bride" makes reference to "winter, snow shoes and hunters"; while "Head Home" is an earnest plea for simpler times. "Bring me a day full of honest work and a roof that never leaks, I'll be satisfied," surmises Smith on the album's highpoint, as layers of guitar and keyboard spiral upwards towards the light.

What or who Van Occupanther is is never stated. It doesn't really matter. Like Werner Herzog's extraordinary recent documentary "Grizzly Man", Midlake remind us of where we've come from and how we arrived - the marvel of evolution and but the humanity we lost through evolving. And like picking a Lewis Carroll text from the shelves and jumping - Jumanji-like - into its pages, this echo of the past has album of 2006 written all over it.

    by Adam Webb