Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Midlake's "The Trials of Van Occupanther"



This is my new favorite album. It's beautiful, soaring, and transcendent - tender but itchy enough to get into your dreams. Midlake are from Texas and it's hard not to picture a sun-burnt, off-the-grid landscape, an old mining town or scrub forest encampment. The first song, Roscoe, blew me away the first time I heard it. It instantly recalled a week one summer when I was in college and Arthur and I went to Boulder to visit some friends. Driving out from Iowa we listened to Neil Young the entire time making our way through the Rockies. It was just so perfect, so exactly like the place and the feeling, so magically in synch. This is like that.

Neil Young, Seals and Croft, Mercury Rev, the Pernice Brothers, Grandaddy, the Beta Band, a touch of Radiohead - all of them are in there. Arthur said it reminded him of Steely Dan a little even. The music is tender and succinct - really heavily guitar based with flutes and violin, some synth. Very folk-ish, very 70's folk. The vocals are primary, lush, and melodic, and the lyrics mysterious. There is a vague allusion to a husband (and hopeful wife) living back in 1891 and also in the present day (naturally I have added a time machine and magic to the scenario). Stonecutters, mountaineers, cutting branches for fire, running with deer - the mood is solitary, earnest, self-disclosing but vague. It manages not to be cheesy. Really. It is just sweet and beautiful. Some of the lyrics I picked out:
let me not be too consumed with this world
sometimes I want to go home and stay out of sight for a long time

it's hard for me but i'm trying (chorus)

when they get back they're all mixed up with no one to stay with (this is one of the lyrics that support my time machine theory)

The song that I love is posted on their myspace page:
http://myspace.com/midlake (Roscoe)

Pitchforkmedia don't give it such a glowing review but for comparison here is a link:
http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/37268/Midlake_The_Trials_of_Van_Occupanther

I am reading The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner right now and with this album it's like I have delved into a romantic and remote Utah homestead from 1891. God, it is also such a beautiful book. I am so jealous of Susan Burling Ward's life, the adventure, the nature. I hope at some time in my life to live like that, even for a little while. Out on the land - with the open sky to keep watch over me.

38 comments:

PD said...

I cannot listen here, but will do so asap. It sounds right up my alley. I never read Wallace Stegner and feel that I should try that. I am about to start a new Swedish mystery. Henning Mankell, who writes dark and moody stuff.

Anonymous said...

Join me at my bunker in montana! I have a typewriter w/ a broken "k" key and everything. I likey the midlakes and re-plug one of my fave sites for hearing new stuff:

http://hype.non-standard.net/

It compiles mp3s from shitloads of blogs, etc, and then puts them in one window for easy listening...just type in the band name.

fairy butler said...

other records on rotation today, new listening:

dirty on purpose, hallelujah sirens = good, languid, noisy lullaby, not the most amazing thing but pretty good.

be your own pet, self titled = can't help myself. rock n shit.
finally their full length came out.

camera obscura, can't remember title = kind of 80's jangly, sort of country-esque, great female vocal, also good.

Anonymous said...

goddamned i'm bored. i am ready to cut. who. who would like a bite to the face?

Anonymous said...

2 options: biting or sleeping.

Anonymous said...

Oh I was gonna mention Camera Obscura this morning. I was telling you and arthur about it on the way home from camp. I love "We gotta get out of this country" or whatever it's called. But one of their older songs: "Eighties Fan" is great.

Anonymous said...

i 'll take a bite. not only am i bored, but i am hot. this place feels like it is about 85 degrees in here. seriously.

I have been listening to a band whose name i cannot remember now...something orchestra, and it is good and weird.

fairy butler said...

did i mention that I am going insane? insane. can i leave now? creep away? I am ready to battle the surface of the sun vs. this soul death station.

Anonymous said...

is that a new x-box game? the sun vs. this soul death station? it should be.

i know, i just whipped out my guidebook. i'm not even pretending to be reading a manuscript.

fairy butler said...

it is fucking fucking hot. i have to get a cozy for my beer. why am i on the blogs now you may ask? because, sigh, i am working on more internets stuff. actually, it's a beautifully designed website that I didn't design for my pal. but man it's hot sitting here. and kinda depressing. plus arthur is away and peanut is too hot to touch. doncha feel sorry for me?

fairy butler said...

catching up on the ATC's on NPR.

fairy butler said...

more depression.

Anonymous said...

hi fb, i am hot too. i asked the folks at the video store next door if i could sleep there. they laughed. not funny to me.

fairy butler said...

dubz, when it's super hot like this it's the worst. worse than below zero. I think. I am having peanuts and beer for dinner. no appetite because of heat. drenched sitting here. nasty and gross.

that link toods put up for music is pretty awesome by the way. listening to the dirty pretty things (the other 1/2 of the defunct libertines) - me like. i decided no more npr. no more syria, lebanon, israel retardation. if flavor flav and paris can't heal it then i give up.

fairy butler said...

one of the homeless guys "old brown skull" had rigged up an actual hammock between a couple trees. He was sleeping on it when i walked by on my way to work. cop car was parked nearby but none to be seen. the encampment is slowly returning although I have not seen pirate #1 or pirate #2 back. they seem scary - that's why i notice.

Corny said...

Just listened to the Myspace link, beautiful, I likes alot, thinking I'll download the album if itunes has it.
Thanks FB!

Heart As Arena said...

Crossing To Safety is also amazing, peeeeeeeeeeeds. Angle of Repose is like some slow bed. I don't know what that means, but it's a good thing.

Anonymous said...

we should have a cd burning night pd, corns, whoever else. cocktails and free new musix? maybe we could play boggle while the discs burn and really nerd out.

sloth said...

Hi FB! Cd party = most excellent plan. My collection needs freshening.

Tired today; didn't sleep well cuz heat vs. sick-wind balance is again out of whack. Watermelon chunx for dinner last night. Yum.

fairy butler said...

it sux sloth. my dinner last night was multi-tiered:
1 liter selzter water
1 beer
1 push-up sorbet thing
several handfuls of peanuts
handful of tortilla chips
small bowl of vanilla ice cream
water
water
water

i've decided that the studio is out of the question. it's usually 10°+ hotter in there so forget it. which leaves me with... crap in the pants.

fairy butler said...

it's that funny thing when you can't do something it stresses you out - like when the subway wasn't running suddenly i needed to go places far away constantly. psychological goo.

Anonymous said...

THE AMBIEN COOKBOOK
by PAUL SIMMS
Issue of 2006-07-31
Posted 2006-07-24

The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug’s users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands.
—The Times.

Sorpresa con Queso
Ingredients:
7 bags Cheetos-brand cheese snacks
17 to 19 glasses tap water
5 mg. Ambien
Place Cheetos bags in cupboard.
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Wait 2-3 hours, then sleepwalk to kitchen, tear cupboard doors off hinges in search of Cheetos.
Find Cheetos, eat contents of all 7 bags.
Fall back asleep on kitchen floor.
When awakened by early-morning sunlight, get up and say, “What the—?”
Wipe orange Cheetos dust from fingers, face, and hair.
Drink 17 to 19 glasses of water from kitchen tap.
Return to bed.

Icebox Mélange
Ingredients:
Entire contents of refrigerator
1 Diet Snapple
5 mg. Ambien
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Wait 2-3 hours, then sleepwalk to kitchen.
Devour everything in refrigerator (including all fancy mustards and jellies, iffy takeout leftovers, and plastic dial from thermostat).
Belch loud enough to wake wife or girlfriend. When she enters kitchen, bellow, “Can’t you see I’m working here?”
Fall asleep on kitchen floor.
After 4-5 more hours, wake up on subway, fully dressed from the waist up, drinking a Diet Snapple.

Licorice Surprise
Ingredients:
1 black extension cord
1 wall outlet
5 mg. Ambien
Plug extension cord into wall socket near bed.
Plug other end of extension cord into clock radio on nightstand.
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Sleep 3-4 hours.
Roll out of bed, wake up on floor.
See extension cord, think, What a big delicious licorice rope that is!
Chew on essentially flavorless cord until you get to the metallic center, where the surprise is.

Tummy Cake
Ingredients:
5 eggs
2 cups flour
1 cup Crisco
1/2 cup milk
5 mg. Ambien
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
Wake up in kitchen, mixing eggs, flour, Crisco, and milk in—for some reason—a mop bucket.
Let batter settle.
Go to living room, turn on TV, search channels for a show that explains the second part of how to make a cake.
Curse the designer of your TV remote for making a device that has the buttons on the wrong side—all facing the floor, where you can’t see them.
Remember batter.
Retrieve bucket from kitchen, drink entire contents in 3-5 gulps.
Remember that the batter was supposed to be cooked.
Draw hot bath, immerse yourself in it, knead bloated stomach in effort to facilitate cooking process.
When mouth fills with now cooled bathwater, wake up and return to bed.
Lie back on pillow, watch cartoon bluebirds orbiting your head.
Grab one cartoon bluebird in midair and devour it raw, feathers and all.
Wake up at 7 A.M., with wife or girlfriend demanding to know what the F happened in the kitchen last night.
While trying to answer, burp up a single cartoon-bluebird feather. Cover mouth guiltily, even though she seems not to have noticed the feather.
When she slams the bedroom door and goes to work, pick cartoon-bluebird feather out of the air and swallow it.
Fall asleep for 36 more hours, interrupted only by periodic—and somehow epic-seeming—trips to the bathroom.

Nhi Ho Trang Phu
Ingredients:
1 package beef jerky
1 quart mango-flavored Gatorade
1 saucepan potable water
Salt to taste
5 mg. Ambien
Lay out beef jerky and Gatorade on nightstand, in anticipation of somnambulistic snack attack.
Take Ambien, fall asleep.
After 2-3 hours, awaken half-submerged in a rice paddy in the jungle lowlands just north of the Mekong Delta.
Back “in country.” You know you’re going to Heaven, ’cause you’ve spent your time in Hell. But here you are once again—back in the Shit.
Stay still, stay quiet—as quiet as a mouse. You are asleep, but all of your senses are alert.
Spot V.C. sapper no more than one foot away, playing possum in spider hole beneath duvet-cover camouflage.
Silently stalk stationary V.C.; two can play this game, no?
When you gain tactical advantage, corner V.C. and remove ear(s).
Go to kitchen, put ear(s) into pot of water on stove, tie on souvenir lobster bib from Cape Cod trip last summer, sit down at kitchen table with knife in one hand and fork in the other, saying “Fee, fi, fo, fum” over and over—until water boils, or you wake up in police custody despite now earless wife or girlfriend’s protestations of your innocence as delivered to police detective in emergency room, where she now is (whichever comes first).

Anonymous said...

wow that's quite a post toods. i like the licorice recipe best.

Anonymous said...

okay. that is hysterical.

I'm partial to Vietnamese.

Anonymous said...

I don't know why they take so long to load...but this comic strip is teh funny:

http://pbfcomics.com/

Anonymous said...

FB!! I am so up for a CD burning party! I wanna, I wanna. My ipod is dying a slow death, by the way. It keeps stalling and getting stuck and the battery never lasts. I guess it is pretty old. It lived a long life.

Anonymous said...

hi peeds, did they fill you fulla holes? Are you sprinkling?

Street 21 said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

I am so down with the Tummy Cake. Reminds me of early EZ-Bake Oven® experiences as a child.

Anonymous said...

yes, cd burning party. cocktails, snacks, burning of discs. next week some day after work? where? mi casa is your casa - it's the boonies though.

Anonymous said...

pd u can replace the battery in yer pod for about 30 bucks. You get a battery and a pry tool to crack the mutha open. It is a bit tought to get the damn thing open, but my original 1st gen pod now rocks a 11 hour playtime.

Anonymous said...

slothers, your log went all black. power outage?

Anonymous said...

Slothers! I am full of holes and spraying stinky sweat! Yay! Love the heat index. I am so groggy. I am craving ice cream.
Thanks Toods, but I fear it is jamming for other reasons and think the new battery may not solve all the probs. I guess I could try it.
FB, your house or corny's are prime because of how much space you guys have. In case we need to bust a move while we burn.

Anonymous said...

Hi, i got a really good Ambien from this reliable foreign pharmacy called www.1medstore.net I used the promo code FIRST and I got $15.00 off my order. I know it is still valid since my friend just ordered...check it out...www.1medstore.net. Does anyone know if they have better promos for repeat buyers? Jane

Anonymous said...

Hi, i got a really good Ambien from this reliable foreign pharmacy called www.1medstore.net I used the promo code FIRST and I got $15.00 off my order. I know it is still valid since my friend just ordered...check it out...www.1medstore.net. Does anyone know if they have better promos for repeat buyers? Sarah

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