Welcome back
On arriving in tonights venue, The Chalk in Brighton pretty early in the evening, I was keen to get my photo pass and stake a decent view near stage, I spoke to several other early birds who all as one were filled with excitement to again have Midlake on UK soil.
Talk moved to the latest album and it's first impressions on our ears.
My thoughts and those of other long term Midlakers is that For The Sake Of Bethel Woods contains a feast or meze of all the previous releases within it's grooves, even back to Bamnan And Slivercork. I am sure this was not pre planned but Midlake are maybe at this point standing at a crossroads with a mix of an album that seems to sum up the journey to this point.
There seems to be genuine relief from
Eric Pulido and the band on hitting the stage.
The quote from Eric of this being Midlake's
second home seemed genuine and of course was greeted with crowd approval. The band then relaxed into the job of reminding us of their wide ranging past material mixed with the new.
Midlake set off with three songs from the latest album which are growing fast into your mind as though they were always there, Bethel Woods with it's up front drums and pounding piano into the jaunty guitar riff on Glistening. Moving onto their classic Van Occupanther duo of Gathered in Springtime and Young Bride followed by two from The Courage Of Others. Acts of Man still hitting the right mark.
We then get the epic anthem Antiphon. Antiphon stands high among their repertoire as a real diamond on the album of the same name. It has some amazing drumming and rises to ever greater heights as it ebbs and flows.
We reach the point where Eric explains the reasons behind writing Noble on the new record the song is named after drummer McKenzie Smith’s infant son “Noble” who was born with a rare brain disorder. “Noble was born with a rare brain disease. When he was born, we were told the life expectancy of most children with his disease was between 6 months to 2 years. The heavy nature of Noble’s condition and the new reality for my friend and bandmate McKenzie (and his wife and daughter) wasn’t something we took lightly. We were really excited to create this song for him and for Noble to not only acknowledge the struggle but to also celebrate this amazing and beautiful boy. The wonderful news is that more than 2 years later, Noble is still here with us! He has beaten so many odds already and continues to amaze and prove to us how incredibly strong he is. His life is extremely challenging on many levels, so every day we have with him is a precious gift.”
The poignancy was not lost on the crowd or in fact the band who were obviously moved while Eric told the crowd the background to the song.
A beautiful piece was then delivered to us.
Roscoe followed and possibly my current go to tune The Old and the Young.
An encore of Head Home and then sure enough we were, many surrounded the Merch table where the old and new albums were doing extremely fast business. The Texan on sales duty told me they have vastly under estimated how much vinyl they needed on tour and have to restock from the USA on coming to the UK from Europe.
As mentioned by many on the night it is good to have Midlake back on English soil for our delight.
