The Courage Of Others

Midlake, one of America's most successful and celebrated acts make their long-awaited return with their extraordinary third album, 'The Courage of Others'. This album could be described as their most complete and beautiful body of work yet, best appreciated as a whole in the old-fashioned sense of an album - which makes perfect sense when you know Midlake linchpin Tim Smith's fondness for the look and feel of past times. So what's changed since the 'Trials of Van Occupanther', their second, hugely loved breakthrough album? Just as that record was in part inspired by the soft (er) rock of the early-to-mid 1970s - from Neil Young and America to Fleetwood Mac - so Midlake's new album also looks to a slightly earlier, and definitely British, trad-tainted folk sound. It may share the same gorgeously analogue-warm electro-acoustic template as 'Van Occupanther' but it's a slower, darker and more carved record, both eerier and dreamier.