Midlake revisits Seventies Art Rock--

It's A Largely Pointless Trip

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I was a high school freshman when the seventies dawned, and change was in the air. I'm not talking about sociopolitical upheaval here--I'm talking what really matters in our daily life--namely, rock and roll.

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FM radio was just beginning to subvert the AM top forty format with a curious genre called "album rock." For the first time, we could sample "deep cuts" from hit albums with our own ears, rather than relying on reviews from Rolling Stone, Village Voice and Crawdaddy, before shelling out our hard-earned coke bottle money on the latest Monkees release. We were free at last.

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Or so we thought.

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Every revolution has its downside, and the repercussions of the FM revolution was that it gave credence to that most horrid of all mutants, art rock. In retrospect, we can lay the blame squarely on the scrawny shoulders of Pete Townsend and the Who's Tommy, the world's first (shudder) rock opera. And while Tommy was a noble experiment, it had the unintended effect of empowering every arthead in every college town in America (and Europe, I suppose) with the idea that Tolkien-inspired bad poetry and music theory classes could elevate their garage bands to art.

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The sleepy little college town of Denton, Texas was at that time to fusion jazz what Austin would become to outlaw C&W. It was a well-deserved reputation-- North Texas State University's

One O'Clock Lab Band even won a grammy for its jazz endeavors. The sad offshoot of that was that it also attracted every hippie who had ever strummed a guitar, blew a few notes into a recorder or read a few passages from Gravity's Rainbow. For a Texas hippie, Denton was Utopia.

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Fast forward three some-odd decades later. North Texas State is now the University of North Texas, and Denton is still a college town forty miles north of Dallas, and still is a haven for collegiates who consider their every breath a whiff of "art." Occasionally, something relevant emerges from this self-absorbed community. Midlake's sophomore effort, The Trials of Van Occupanther, however, is not such an item.

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Midlake's full-length debut, Bamnan and Silvercork, was a bit of a cult hit and earned them a European tour. That's really not surprising, given its ennui-laced eighties pop feel, even less surprising, given they were signed to Cocteau Twins alumnus Simon Raymonde's Bella Union label. Still, it was an admirable first effort. Sheesh, even Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) jumped on the Midlake bandwagon.

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On The Trials of Van Occupanther, Midlake eschews synths in favor of an accoustic sound that harkens back to the pseudo-medieval strains of early seventies art rock. Think Jethro Tull's Minstrel in the Gallery meets Moody Blues' Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. And then recall how overblown the messages those albums tried to convey seem in retrospect.

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Ostensibly, The Trials of Van Occupanther chronicles a man's trek on a path of self discovery, which somehow parallels some sort of universal truth about mankind--at least, that's what I think it ostensibly does. The problem is, the lyrics are so shrouded in "meaning" they don't ever tell the story. There's a pacifist theme here, a quest for everlasting love there and a longing for a simpler lifestyle over there. In their quest to create art, Midlake neglected to tell their story compellingly.

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Musically, however, Midlake succeeds in creating a soundtrack for this mess of a tale. The band is undeniably tight, albeit a bit reliant on music school theory. It's to their credit that Midlake faithfully recreated that overwraught, hipper-than-thou fairy-tale world of early seventies art rock. It's also to their detriment.

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The Trials of Van Occupanther is a living example of "second album syndrome"--a valiant effort, but a little too much of an effort. I'm not giving up on them--yet. Midlake is a band to watch, regardless of this effort.