Midlake : A Bridge To Far

Midlake were a much obsessed over, nearly cult-like band back in the 2000s. With singer and main songwriter Tim Smith, Midlake made two highly exalted records in Bamnan and Slivercork and The Trials of Van Occupanther. The Denton, TX-based band made an outsider art record with the former, and the latter was revered for it’s […]

Midlake : For The Sake Of Bethel Woods

Midlake came out the early 2000s indie rock scene and had a vibe all their own. They had a dark folksy sound that veered somewhere between Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac, and touches of Black Sabbath thrown in for good measure. The Denton, TX six-piece wrote songs that felt both medievel and futuristic. Sci-fi elements mixed […]

For The Love Of Roscoe: Looking Back On Midlake’s ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’

2007. It was a pretty good year for music. Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero, of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, just to name a few. All of those mentioned albums had […]

Midlake :: Antiphon

So here’s the scoop in case you didn’t know or didn’t really care, Midlake was/is a band from Denton, Texas that was fronted by a guy named Tim Smith. They created strange worlds on their albums that were part renaissance fair and part Ray Bradbury novel. A renaissance fair that took place in another dimension […]

Antiphon is sorta brilliant…

I’m on my third spin in a row of Midlake’s newest album -and first without former singer/leader Tim Smith- Antiphon. I will admit that when I first heard the album on NPR’s First Listen I was a little worried. Not that the album sounded bad. That’s not it at all. It’s just that nothing was […]

Goodbye Van Occupanther: Tim Smith and life after Midlake

In the fall of 2007 I read an article in Spin Magazine about this band named Midlake. Denton, Texas boys with a penchant for dark, folksy songs that had the feel of both Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac, and a Ray Brandbury story. It was a review of a live show and the journalist put them […]

John Grant-Queen of Denmark

It took three years but I finally found the proper follow-up to Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther in John Grant’s Queen of Denmark. Man, I can’t believe I’d never listened to this album. It’s filled with Midlake’s penchant for creating these wooded landscapes and D&D-lite atmosphere, but since it’s NOT their album the melancholy […]