Seventeen years ago today Bella Union Records released this masterpiece. As with all classic records, it still sounds as good today as it did all that time ago. A lot of people didn’t get Midlake at the beginning but Label owner Simon Raymonde did and he did everything I could to stoke the fires around Europe with promoter friends and press colleagues. It’s never easy at the start but you just have to keep the belief and move forward. A band who despite many hardships managed to fight through the pain and remain an important band on our roster all these years later. Live, they’ve never sounded better. Let’s raise a cheer to that strange character Van Occupanther.
Suffused with a romantic yearning for the simpler life, this was a record pitched between 1871, 1971 and somewhere out of time: between Henry David Thoreau and Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, between 1970s Laurel Canyon thinking and a longing for something more mysterious. Rich reserves of wistful melody, dreamy horns, rolling guitars and plaintive pianos reflect its elusive, idiosyncratic narratives: a couple long to be robbed by bandits so they can start anew, an outcast scientist ponders his pariah status, a woman chases a frisky deer, a river leads who knows where yet leaves you little choice but to follow
Although I do distinctly remembering falling for the bubbling charms of Bamnan and Slivercork (the debut LP from Texan five piece Midlake), nothing had us at all prepped for those first bars of “Roscoe”, the era defining lead track to the band’s utterly seminal “The Trials of Van Occupanther“.
Originally released in late July 2006, it is an album of misty nostalgia, thick analogue rock and roll riffs, layers of ghostly harmonies and generations of swooning folk and lore. It’s just perfect, beautiful and evocative songs that tell a tale and keep you hooked to every inch of the stereo from it’s driving first beats to it’s soothing final hums. An album with very few equals.
Newly remastered and back on vinyl. “The Trials of Van Occupanther” is available now on 180g Opaque Marigold vinyl.
This self released pressing features artwork true to the original 2006 layout. Experience the album Rolling Stone celebrated for one of the greatest songs of the 2000s.
The Fat Angel Sings 