Like Punk in’ 77, Red Wedge in the 80’s and Greenday’s American Idiot in the noughties, every generation, and every dominant political cause that accompanies it, has a defining musical point. For the Green generation, Midlake’s The Courage of Others represents that point.
Following the understated wonder of their sophomore album, 2006’s The Trials of Van Occupanther, Midlake laboured in the primitive stages of recording the follow up. Somewhere down the line the band retreated deep into the woodland, Bon Iver style, in order to slave over this wonderful deeply layered record. The final result is one of haunting and understated beauty and one that continues the purple patch enjoyed by alternative guitar music across the pond.
Perversely it is one of our own whose influence is most notable on this record, that being the relentless melancholy of Radiohead, particularly OK Computer. On stand out track The Horn, Midlake’s hypnotic guitar lines, and soothing, heartbreak-tinged vocals recall the brooding menace of Paranoid Android, whilst the chanted closing refrain “Bring Down, Bring Down” , on the track of the same title, draws obvious parallels.
Yet it is the aforementioned themes that render this album a fresh and inspiring listen. On opening track ‘Acts of Man’, vocalist Tim Smith begs “Before the ground starts to fade, start to falter. Let me inside. Let me inside”. Warning of the threat posed to nature by the destructive nature of the human lifestyle is a theme recurrent throughout the record and give this beautiful record a distinctive political message. That is what makes The Courage of Others so incredibly potent, in that it marries meaning and sincerity with music of the highest quality. The first great album of 2009.