photo credit: Barbara FG

***

“I remember hearing it, and it was a really emotional, heavy song,” recalls Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith. “I said, ‘This is one of the best gifts I could ever imagine getting from somebody.’”

The track in question is “Noble”—a swaying psych-rock ballad that anchors the band’s first album in nine years. Working from a chord progression by keyboardist/flautist Jesse Chandler, frontman Eric Pulido designed the piece as a tribute to McKenzie’s infant son, who was born in May 2019 with a rare brain disorder called semi-lobar holoprosencephaly. The lyrics not only conjure his friend’s pain upon learning the diagnosis—but also the beauty, and resilience, Noble offered. “You can always laugh while I/ struggle to crack a smile,” Pulido sings on the recording, backed by a heavenly swirl of synthesizers and Smith’s “crispy, crunchy trip-hop” drum groove.

Recording the song wasn’t easy for Smith. Midlake were at Dallas’ Elmwood Recording studio, working with producer John Congleton on their long-awaited comeback LP, For the Sake of Bethel Woods—and the emotion was so raw that the drummer knew that he couldn’t stay in that headspace for too long. “I told John, ‘I think I’ve got about two takes in me, and that’s about all I’m gonna be able to give you,’” he recalls. “That second take was the [one].”

Everything about that moment crystalizes Midlake in 2022: the clarity of their creative vision, their refusal to overthink the song, the strength of the brotherhood that brought them together all these years later.

***

The Smith/Pulido friendship, which dates back to age 16, is a rare throughline in the Midlake story—a sprawling narrative that involves multiple sonic shifts, a breakthrough album that still defines its year, the loss of a pivotal singer-songwriter and an inspirational start from scratch. McKenzie co-founded the band in 1999 with a crew of like-minded jazz students—including multi-instrumentalists Tim Smith and Eric Nichelson—at the University of North Texas College of Music. As their jam sessions started to morph from funk into rock, Pulido joined as a guitarist and harmony singer, solidifying the early lineup that earned mild indie buzz with their debut album, 2004’s Bamnan and Silvercork.

The turning point came two years later with their second LP, The Trials of Van Occupanther, a more professionalsounding song cycle that paired a widescreen ‘70s prog grandeur—flute, bassoon, 12-string guitars—with a hummable, hipster-approved vibe on folky sing-along anthems like “Roscoe” and “Head Home.” By this point, Midlake were still highly collaborative, each member flaunting their versatility on various instruments. But Tim had become the obvious bandleader—a reality McKenzie says they were all happy with.

“Tim kind of settled into, ‘I think I’m casting my vision,’” he says. “By Van Occupanther, he really had something he wanted to do, and we were like, ‘This is great. Let’s follow it.’” They chased that vision to a darker, decidedly less commercial space on their 2010 sequel, The Courage of Others, which found Tim drawing heavily on his newfound love of British folk. The result was exquisite, if claustrophobic—no catchy choruses here, only hauntingly arranged, minor-key epics with philosophical themes. And the heaviness indirectly fed into the recording sessions, as the band worked tirelessly to perfect the tracks.

“That was a horrible pattern in the past: overworking things to death,” McKenzie recalls. “It did finally have its own vibe, but I can tell you The Courage of Others could have turned out drastically different. I do find a piece of beauty in it, but it’s also a hard record for me. That time was really depressing in a lot of ways. The touring was pretty fun because we played the songs differently live—we played them more energetically and had a lot of big, loud jams. It was our most successful campaign, the biggest shows we did at the time. We were actually able to make a living doing it. With the album, I remember thinking some of the earlier versions we did had a spark, an energy that was really rad. But after doing each song 14, 15, 16 times, it starts to feel really stale.”

And that tension became foreshadowing, as the band labored— and ultimately failed—to record their planned fourth LP, Seven Long Suns. In November 2012, after tracking a substantial amount of material, Tim left the ensemble—the anticlimax of a project with so much potential.

“It depends who you ask [on] how close it was to being finished,” Pulido says. “We had the songs for sure—it was getting definitive recordings that everybody felt were right. We even played some of those songs [live] during that time to see how an audience felt about them, how they came to life in a different way. Then, we got back into the studio and tried to capture that. We even went out to LA and recorded with a producer, and that didn’t end up working out.”

For McKenzie, the dynamics within the band had become strained. “We were happily following [Tim] because we believed in his talent,” he says. “But it becomes less fun when you’re just trying to facilitate what someone has in their head. Not that you can’t have someone as the central leader. But, to me, a big reason some of the best bands sound so cool is [having the] individual personalities.”

The split seemed to make sense for both sides, with Tim moving on to start a still-in-the-works solo project called Harp. (“We are still in contact,” Pulido says of his former bandmate. “I’m excited to hear [the album] as well. We’re still on good terms, and I wish him the best in what he’s doing.”)

Meanwhile, Midlake made the tough but necessary choice to wipe the slate clean—writing and recording a brand new album, 2013’s Antiphon, in one rejuvenating six-month burst, with Pulido as their new frontman. Determined to move forward with renewed purpose, they made a major financial investment in the corresponding tour.

“[We thought], ‘Let’s just say, ‘yes’ to things.’” McKenzie says. “‘Let’s try to propel us to the next level. We’re not getting any younger here.’ I remember on that tour, we were in the mindset of putting all our chips in. We’d been doing it for a long time. We spent the most money that year on making sure we had the best crew we could afford, trying to make every show top-notch. It was a great year, except we didn’t make any money—everyone else did but us. [Laughs.] You’re like, ‘We can’t keep doing that.’ So immediately the thing was, ‘When we’re done with that, what are we gonna do?’”

The answer: anything else.

“It was a conscious decision [to take a pause],” Pulido adds. “I vividly remember that tour coming toward the end and everybody wondering where each person was at respectively, Midlake or otherwise. I was pretty vocal about doing other musical things and taking a break—I didn’t think it would co-exist with Midlake that well because we try to put everything into Midlake, for better or worse, when we’re doing it. And also I think we were just tired, and it wore on the health of our relationships respectively—we hadn’t stopped since we started. I also wanted to start a family—not that those [two things] can’t co-exist. But I think, for a lot of reasons, it was a conscious [decision] to take an indefinite hiatus.”

***

The members of Midlake veered in numerous directions during their break: Some started families; several participated in the BNQT side-project (featuring members of Grandaddy, Band of Horses, Franz Ferdinand and Travis); McKenzie continued to find work as an in-demand session drummer; and Pulido released his debut solo LP, 2019’s To Each His Own, under the name E.B. The Younger.

“I think part of us was like, ‘What’s gonna happen?’” Pulido says. “And then next thing you know, you look up, and it’s six years later. There was an anniversary for one of the [Midlake] records, and there was a conversation about it: ‘Should we try to do a tour? Would that be beneficial or fun?’ We were starting to talk about it, and that got the wheels turning about doing the band thing again.”

“After my son [Noble] was born [in 2019], there was a lot of reflection and time to think about these things,” McKenzie adds. “I remember getting the band together. We sat down and said, ‘Do you want to do this again? Do you think making another record would be a good idea?’ And we ultimately said, ‘We’re getting older, and it’s hard to start from scratch with a new band name. We should continue on as Midlake with the brand and the equity we’ve [earned to get] this thing to the level it’s at. It’s hard to get to that level at anything.’”

With the whole band onboard—minus original bassist Paul Alexander, who decided to sit out the project—Midlake made a loose plan to start workshopping new ideas, without a strict time table to weigh them down or add too much pressure. “It was slow going for a while,” McKenzie admits. But, eventually, everyone started to pool ideas—and it became even more of a collaborative process than Antiphon.

“When everything locked down in early 2020, we utilized that time to write and record and demo these ideas because we couldn’t do much [else],” Pulido says. “In a lot of ways, it was the silver lining of that time because everybody had their respective recording setups they could use. Little by little, we’d go over to someone else’s studio or house and work out some of those ideas. We just did that for the better part of a year.” 

The pandemic inevitably altered their plans—specifically the idea of recording with Congleton in LA. But when he suggested they link up in January 2021 at the Dallas studio, they booked two weeks—and quickly worked to get their songs ready. Congleton’s presence was crucial for a band unified after a long drought—they’d never worked with an outside producer, and having that objective voice allowed them to circumvent any preconceived notions of what a modern Midlake album might sound like.

“I don’t want to be held down, like, ‘You can’t do that because that’s Midlake,’ but I just want to be aware of that and true to that,” Pulido says. “Bamnan and Silvercork does not sound like Van Occupanther. Maybe there are some common threads through our albums. But after Van Occupanther, [we could have said], ‘OK, that thing worked, so just keep doing that thing,’ and we’re just not that band. I want to be true to that, but we want to be true to ourselves. I love Tim, and it was really hard when he left—as a friend and also a bandmate in such a pivotal role. Trying to fill that void—having made another record and also having put together side projects in between—I feel more confident and comfortable in not only where we are now but also in paying homage to when Tim was in the band. It’s not a conscious effort on anyone’s part that we have to sound a certain way or maintain our classic sound—I don’t even know what our classic sound is.”

Pulido and company occasionally nod to the old strains of Midlake, most overtly on the wintry folk-rock ballad “Feast of Carrion,” with its lush piano and flute arrangement. But Bethel Woods noticeably—and bravely—side-steps the clear go-to moves that worked so well in the past. “Glistening” leans into a jittery funk guitar riff; “Gone” builds swirling synths around a ghostly two-chord drone; “Noble” is one of many stripped-down songs, challenging Pulido to trust his vocal in its more naked state.

“Obviously, there’s an inherent transparency to a song like ‘Noble’ that just has a vocal and piano for part of it,” he says. “John would say that we probably beat things up too much the way we’d worked before—trying to make everything so overworked. Those were some areas we went to that would have been uncomfortable or foreign for us [before].”

It’s not like Midlake recorded a hip-hop album, but Bethel Woods isn’t a guaranteed slam-dunk for the fan whose gateway album was Van Occupanther or The Courage of Others. Still, the band is maintaining a sage outlook.

“I guess it’s part of getting older,” McKenzie says. “Having other stuff in your life matters much more than if you’re gonna keep all your fans from your past. You zoom out and start to think about life differently, as I have.”

“We didn’t know—and honestly still don’t know—who stuck around, or what they remember, or where they started with us,” Pulido adds. “There is a before-Tim and an after-Tim. The thing we’ve embraced this time around is the joy of being together and creating something together—not only the last two years but also beyond. Just having each other is a gift.”