Midlake don’t get enough credit for being ahead of their time. Actually, they don’t get any credit, understandable in light of the Denton, Tex., sextet's antiquated imagery and sepia-drunk sound. But the formula that made The Trials of Van Occupanther a sleeper hit in 2006—bearded indie-folk meets California soft-rock meets Fleetwood Mac at their most glassy-eyed—would likely make it a massive success in 2013. It’s certainly in their best interest to revisit that style after the clock-stopping Tull torpor of The Courage of Others, and guitarist Eric Pulido claims their fourth LP Antiphon “is the most honest representation of the band as a whole.” Except he goes on to say, “as opposed to one person’s vision that we were trying to facilitate.” Pulido got an internal promotion to frontman after the departure of singer-songwriter Tim Smith in 2012, and...shots fired?
Antiphon does somehow manage to be a “forget everything you know about Midlake!” album as well as a “return to form,” at least if you remember that Van Occupanther was preceded by the burlier, less precious (title aside) Bamnan and Silvercork in 2004. Pulido’s words foreshadow a more aggressive tack on the part of Midlake and they certainly oblige during the first half of Antiphon. If the title track and “Provider” don’t exactly boogie, they’re at least rollin’ and tumblin’, with the shuffling beats and sticky, distorted guitar leads that invert Midlake’s previous ratio of rock to folk. More notably, the flutes and other non-strung instruments are pushed to the periphery, foregrounding a lightly psychedelic blues that I suppose recalls Fleetwood Mac before their big personnel shakeup. Likewise, Pulido begins the record asking the listener to “start a war,” and goes on to speak of foxholes and space shuttles. There’s even one song called “It’s Going Down”, which doesn’t sound all that more vigorous than what came before it, but hey, make your own Yung Joc "meet me at the farmer's market" jokes.
But throughout, it’s clear that Smith’s departure is an amputation that doesn’t change Midlake’s DNA. They’ve got a couple of opening gigs for Pearl Jam in the near future, so that should give you an idea of whether they’ve retained the earnestness of their previous work. Pulido doesn’t have Smith’s distinct, dulcet tone, though it’s actually to Midlake’s advantage on Antiphon. His vocals are alopecia-stricken, almost fascinating in their lack of texture even when layered in harmony, offering no resistance to the bulkier music backing him. So Antiphon never sounds awkward even when he sings about space travel on “Corruption” (“we went to the moon/ with a tycoon”) in a way that comes off as quaint as the more typically Midlake-y concerns like sorting out “The Old and the Young” and having a good woman waiting at home by the fire.
The bigger shift is in the production, provided by Grammy-nominated Tony Hoffer. His most frequently cited credits are Beck and Air, who both ended up working with Nigel Godrich on their very next albums, so I’ve come to think of his aesthetic as a kind of Radiohead starter kit. Midlake get that kind of sound here—you wouldn’t call it overproduced, but there’s tons of production if you know where to listen for it, as the stereo panning is neatly utilized, the percussion crisp and non-obtrusive, while all of the folk instruments are spit-shined and shellacked. It’s a retro-modernist (or modernist-retro) schematic, aspiring for Laurel Canyon decor while paying West Hollywood rent.
As far as, the songs themselves—well, to Antiphon’s credit, it's a very consistent record. And to its detriment, it's a very consistent record. While Antiphon might be the most honest representation of Midlake, Smith’s ostensible iron fist penned songs like “Roscoe” and “We Gathered In Spring”, songs that bore a personality and vision that the overly democratic Antiphon eschews. The nice things I thought I was going to say about the title track are actually applicable to “Provider” once I remembered which one was which. “It’s Going Down” also stood out mainly because it repeats the title, “Vale” only because it’s an instrumental and thus the most memorable song here by default. After “Vale”, side B of Antiphon has about as much melodic grounding as a drone record, and if it wasn’t for a reprise of “Provider” at the close, you’d be hard pressed to recall the goodwill generated at the beginning.
And that’s problematic, because if they aren’t going to offer much in the way of innovation or currency, Midlake should at the very least be tuneful enough to counterbalance it. In our review of Swans’ pulverizing two-hour art-rock opus The Seer, Mike Powell explained its appeal by paraphrasing a quote from Ben Marcus regarding the nature of experimental fiction: it wasn't a record for someone deciding whether or not they'd rather be listening to music or playing paintball. By the same token, Midlake isn’t competing with Swans records. Considering who they are competing with makes for an even less flattering comparison. It’s not hard to find folky rock bands with stronger melodies, bolder personae, or even ones that are just flat-out weirder while operating squarely within the mainstream: let’s not forget that Fleet Foxes used a couple minutes of saxophone on their last album and purists flipped the fuck out. That doesn’t change the fact that Antiphon is still a likeable, pleasant listen that will always wait for you by the hearth after a long day. But for a “forget everything you know about Midlake!” album, it's almost exactly how you remember them.
