While preparing to review Midlake’s third album, The Courage of Others, I accidentally queued it up in reverse order. The thing is, I didn’t realize I’d done it until well after the album had finished. Nothing sounded out of place, the flow from song to song wasn’t disrupted and the same lulled numbness was achieved as when played in the proper sequence. This is not a ringing endorsement.
In moving from the mid-tempo, ’70s AM sound of its breakthrough 2006 release, The Trials of Van Occupanther, to the dead-tempo, ’60s British folk of Courage, Midlake has flattened its melodies and excised any urgency in its songwriting, but at least the band has added a bunch of flutes and ramped up the rustic farming imagery to keep listeners entertained. While individual moments can achieve a hazy, ill-defined beauty, taken as a whole, the album quickly descends into a monolithic morass of indistinguishable and seemingly endless songs that possess only the power to increase the heaviness of eyelids and the frequency of yawns.
The album might have the makings of a grower for some, but things need some signs of life to grow and The Courage of Others is dead on arrival, whether forwards or backwards.
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