Artist: Midlake
Album: Antiphon
Released: 2013
Style: Indie Rock
Tracklist:
01 – Antiphon
02 – Provider
03 – The Old and the Young
04 – It’s Going Down
05 – Vale
06 – Aurora Gone
07 – Ages
08 – This Weight
09 – Corruption
10 – Provider Reprise
Of the countless number of things that can go wrong in a band, two traumas clearly top the list: Losing your lead singer and losing your main songwriter.
Midlake just went through both.
When this innovative prog-folk band started to record a new CD — the followup to my favorite disc of 2010, “The Courage of Others” — intentions and goals among the members started to fray. Tim Smith, who sang lead on all the songs and who wrote them too, had a radically different view from the others about how the music should progress. In a huff, he split, leaving the remaining four members leaderless.
“It wasn’t an option for us to just lay down,” says guitarist Eric Pulido. “We wanted to carry on. We just didn’t know how.”
The solution started with Pulido himself, who, in the past, sang harmony. He stepped up to lead vocals and spearheaded the writing, which is now credited uniformly to the band.
“We didn’t want to overthink it,” Pulido says. “We said, ‘Let’s just get together and see what happens.’ ”
The result, heard on Midlake’s enveloping new CD, “Antiphon,” does not sound all that removed from what always made the band great. The music still features harmonies as thick and braided as artisanal pretzels, with chord structures as mysterious and expansive as classic “head-music” of the 1960s and ’70s. It’s as lovely as folk and as mysterious as prog-rock.
The band will bring that amalgam to Mercury Lounge Wednesday.
As it turns out, Pulido’s timbre and vocal inflections have a lot in common with the departed Smith. “It wasn’t me trying to sound like him,” Pulido says. “I was just singing like me.”
The situation parallels to an uncanny degree the one in the band Genesis in the ’70s. When their front man, Peter Gabriel, ditched them, drummer Phil Collins took over the mic and sounded remarkably like his predecessor.
Pulido acknowledges the connection. “Genesis’ ‘Trick of the Tale’ was a big record for me,” he says. “Also Pink Floyd’s ‘Meddle.’ We were spinning that a lot when making this record.”
The first song that launched Midlake’s new disc, “Vale,” takes clear influence from another prime prog act, King Crimson. The members of Midlake had been working on “Vale” when Smith was still in the band. “It was just a jam that became a song,” Pulido says.
That mirrors the trajectory of Midlake itself. They began as college kids in their native Denton, Tex., as a jazz band. But they had a desire to create songs that weren’t “in the nature of jazz,” Pulido says.
The band’s debut, 2004’s “Bamnan and Silvercork,” moved toward psychedela, while the followup, “The Trails of Van Occupanther,” vacillated between ’70s soft-rock and Jethro Tull’s prog. The band moved to the front rank of creativity with 2010’s “The Courage of Others,” which rethought the fine acoustic fingerings, shadowy vocals and medieval tunings of the Brit-folk group Fairport Convention.
“Bands like Fairport, Pentangle and Steeleye Span were strong influences on that record,” Pulido says. “We were wearing our influences on our sleeves.”
The new disc retains the Druidic harmonies, but veers from folk to more charged rock. The CD’s title, “Antiphon,” refers to call-and-response singing. That dynamic reflects the band’s new sense of communal creation.
Pulido says he hopes that sense of harmony will one day rekindle the friendship with Smith, who hasn’t spoken with the others since leaving. For Pulido, the CD’s title reflects the band’s recent challenges.
“It’s not about what happens to you,” he says. “It’s about how you respond. This music is our response.”
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