MIDLAKEThe Courage of Others
(Bella Union)
*** (out of 5)
If you really want to feel fall turning into winter, you can either go and live in the woods, or you can cue up Midlake’s new album The Courage of Others right after you listen to their previous release, 2006’s The Trials of Van Occupanther. The warm harmonies and the gentle melodies and the nature imagery haven’t disappeared, but this is a much lonelier, more serious-minded album than its predecessor, one that draws more deeply on an older folk-rock tradition — the band even dressed up in monks’ robes for the cover photo. It’s as if Midlake has explored further into the forest, trying to get closer to its heart, only to find that nature is colder and more unknowable than they ever imagined.
The Trials of Van Occupanther is one of my favourite albums of the last decade (it’s certainly among the ones I still listen to the most), but The Courage of Others lacks that album’s sense of constant surprise, and instead keeps returning to the same small pool of themes and musical ideas. The early reviews of this album have mostly been raves, so maybe there’s something here I’m just not hearing yet, but for me, the experience of listening to The Courage of Others is like a trip through the woods where you start to suspect that you’ve passed the same tree four or five times already.
0 Yorumlar