Murphy's Earbuds

Midlake
The Trials of Van Occupanther

This album is fall. Unfortunately, I hadn't yet laid my grubby paws on it until the tail end of last year. Colored leaves had long since given way to bare branches and sinus infections. Luckily, a faint memory of this record crept up on me yesterday afternoon as I headed to the train to meet Stacey (also a big fan) in the city. It was as if the temperature and wind were whispering me a reminder about what was my favourite release of 2006.

I understand that, in the subjective sense, there was no debating TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain's reign as BEST album of the year, but, despite it's greatness, it didn't capture my heart like this Midlake album. Maybe it's the production (drums so muted they make Mick Fleetwood sound like Neil Peart and guitar tones reminiscent of Neil Young and the Guess Who). Maybe it's the breezy voices or the pastoral lyrics they deliver. Maybe it's because it recaptures all the greatest things about the music of the 1970's (think Seals & Crofts, America, Bread) without and overt sense of pretense. Some amalgam of these is the basic equation for this, or any, album's success, but this Denton, TX (shout out to Jay and the rest of UNT) band's ability to create beautiful moments out of relatively simple melodic and/or harmonic gestures is what separates it from the pack. Their "antique" lyrics aid in the overarching effect of being in another time and place when you listen to this record. Here are some choice lines from "Roscoe", the first cut off the record:

Stonecutters made them from stones chosen specially for you and I, who will live inside.
The mountaineers gathered tender piled high in which to take along.
Driving many miles, knowing they'd get here...

---

The village used to be all one really needs.
That's filled with hundreds and hundreds of chemicals that mostly surround you.
You wish to flee but it's not like you, so listen to me...

---

Whenever I was a child I wondered what if my name had changed into something more
productive like Roscoe.
Been born in 1891, waiting with my Aunt Rosaline.


I recognize that outside of any musical context these lyrics come off as something of an affectation, but, rest assured, the music (haunting, driving, Neil Youngish) only makes you believe more in the narrator's paean to a simpler time long-forgotten. This theme carries the band through the majority of the record. Between the hard work of the aforementioned artisans and the occasional excursion into the forest ("Did you ever want to be overrun by bandits; to hand over all of your things and start over new?"), it may seem The Trials of Van Occupanther could play out as one giant period send-up; but there are plenty of gentle and sentimental moments, complete with flute obligato to keep you wrapped up in Midlake's spell. From the stillness of the title track to the plaintive tones of a spurned, but earnest and redemptive, lover in "Branches", this album covers a lot of emotional ground, often supported by stunning harmonies and tasteful fills.

Just to make sure I wasn't too wrapped up in memories to look at this disc clearly, I pulled it up on the 'ol iPod in the midst of Staten Island traffic this afternoon. Not even the monotony of the stop and go of the shittiest boro could get in the way of the magic weaved by Midlake's The Trials of Van Occupanther. I sat there, almost oblivious to the lurching sea of Camry's and SUV's, just smiling, singing along, and occasionally mothing the word "wow" at every gorgeous autumn moment I heard.

i know i know i know.

new radiohead!!! new bruce springsteen!!! new mike birbiglia!!! years worth of shit i haven't written about!!! if i can find the time...