Music: Midlake
It’s goodbye and hello from Midlake
An antiphon is a call-and-response style of singing, from Gregorian chants to sea shanties. In the case of Denton, Texas’ favourite sons Midlake, it’s the perfect title for a bold response to a new phase in the band’s illustrious career, with a re-jigged line-up and a newly honed sound as rich and symphonic as it is dynamic and kaleidoscopic.
Formed in 1999 by a group of jazz musicians – they initially were called The Cornbread All-Stars and were heavily influenced by Herbie Hancock, but it wasn’t until the release of the soft-rock and psychedelic strains of their 2006 breakthrough album, The Trials Of Van Occupanther, that Midlake had truly arrived. For their next album, The Courage Of Others, they added some British folk influence, while Antiphon, their fourth album, can be viewed as being more progressive in nature, but with strong streak of psychedlia remaining.
“On Antiphon we wanted to embrace the psychedelia, style and nuance you might hear in bands from yesteryear while also being aware of music influences present now. The result was less folk and more rock. Less nostalgic and more progressive,” says frontman Eric Pulido
But it was a difficult birth: Former frontman and songwriterTim Smith left the band while making Antiphon, a difficult separation that threw into doubt the future of the band. But they decided to regroup, to delete the album made so far, and start from scratch. In the end a further six months was spent making Antiphon, and although you cannot hear the voice of Smith anymore, it still, somehow, sounds like a Midlake record.
The band had already validated their instrumental mettle by backing John Grant on his award-winning 2010 solo debut Queen Of Denmark; now they had to step into new roles, collaborate on songwriting and have Pulido take over as frontman. He admits it wasn’t the easiest transition for any of the band but the experience was enormously freeing: “Antiphon is the most honest representation of the band as a whole, as opposed to one person’s vision that we were trying to facilitate,” he has said, somewhat without subtlety. It was a more honest representation of who we really are.”
St. George’s Church, Thursday 27 Feb, 7pm, £18
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