The Melancholy of Others
January 30th, 2010 by Flint
If The Trials of Van Occupanther was a snapshot look at the lives of 1800’s frontiermen, The Courage of Others has those same men sat around a fire on a cold night after retreating from a great disaster that’s completely destroyed their lives, with their only hope being a glimpse of dying quickly but full well knowing that painful and long starvation is ahead of them.
Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration but it does fairly nicely condense the general gist of Midlake’s latest – the band continues the style they chose for themselves on Trials, but this time leaves things like blog-hits “Roscoe” and “Young Bride” behind and focuses on creating slow and mournful acoustic autumnal laments of defeat. Gone are the lush strings of its predecessor, now the band is tightly sitting behind the basic band instruments but has an added flute in their roster to bring a wistful melody over the acoustic strums and layered vocal harmonies. Sometimes an electric guitar jumps over everything else but the pace is kept steady and calm. Courage of Others isn’t in a hurry to everywhere, it wants you to sit down and sink into its melancholy world.
The Courage of Others is a slow-burner, much moreso than Midlake’s first two albums which weren’t in any hurry to reveal all their sides either. Like said, there aren’t many obvious hooking points and on the first listens everything somewhat melts together – an effect that doesn’t really go away even on further listens by which time you’ve learned to difference between e.g. the (relative) energy of “Children of the Grounds” and “The Horn”, the slow self-pity of the title track and gripping crush of “Winter Dies”. But that’s perfectly cool because in Courage’s case it isn’t that tracks blend together because they’re all non-descript, it’s because the mood they weave is so damn strong. The album flows gorgeously like a 40-minute ballad for the old times, casting a magic that hooks you to the sound. Especially with headphones which is definitely the best way to get everything out of the lush vocal harmonies or the sad flute that features on almost every track.
It seems that Midlake, once infamous for sounding completely different between albums #1 and #2, has now found their sound from warm folk undertones and soft and gorgeous melodies and harmonies. In that respect, The Melancholy of Others isn’t really any sort of progression from their last outing four years ago, in fact it probably could have been released a few months apart from Occupanther and no one would have noticed. But rather than copying the album that brought them to the (relatively) big spotlight, they’ve gone on and decided to show a whole new side of that same sound. The way the music’s made might have stayed in the same basis but the feel of it is completely different. It’s what raises The Courage of Others to its own pedestal and allows it to be another excellent highlight in the discography of a band specialising in such things.
2010 has started in a very wonderful way.
Acts of Man
Tags: Midlake