About to set off on a US tour running throughout June, Midlake today share a video for the new single “Exile”, one of the many highlights from their acclaimed new album, For The Sake Of Bethel Woods, released in March via ATO Records. The new clip features content filmed across the band’s recent UK/EU April tour.
WATCH "EXILE"
Loss and hope, isolation and communion, the cessation, and renewal of purpose – timeless and salient, these themes echo throughout the fifth album from Midlake, their first since Antiphon in 2013. Produced to layered, loving perfection by John Congleton, For the Sake of Bethel Woods is an album of immersive warmth and mystery from a band of ardent seekers, one of our generation’s finest: a band once feared lost themselves by fans, perhaps, but here revivified with freshness of intent. From the cover to the title and beyond, a longing to reconnect with that which seems lost sits at the record’s core. The cover star is keyboardist/flautist Jesse Chandler’s father, who, tragically, passed away in 2018. As singer Eric Pulido explains, “He was a lovely human, and it was really heavy and sad, and he came to Jesse in a dream. I reference it in a song. He said, ‘Hey, Jesse, you need to get the band back together.’ I didn’t take that lightly. We had already had these feelings with everyone in the band of, oh, this could be a cool thing to do. But the dream was a kind of beautiful depiction of a purpose to reconvene and make music together as friends.” Featuring Chandler’s father during John Sebastian’s set, the cover image was taken from the 1970 documentary Woodstock. In 1969, Jesse’s then-16-year-old dad had joined a friend and hitchhiked from Ridgewood, New Jersey, to the legendary festival. Raised in Woodstock after his father moved there in 1981, Jesse later paid a pilgrimage to Bethel Woods with his father; there, the elder Chandler recorded an audio account of his festival experience in the museum’s public database. “So for me, the picture of that kid, my dad, forever frozen in time,” says Chandler, “encapsulates what it means to be in the throes of impressionable and fleeting youth, and all that the magic of music, peace, love and communion bring to it, whether one knows it at the time or not.” A desire to commune with the past and connect with present, lived experience asserts itself from the opening of the album. A song that resonates with Midlake’s return and, perhaps, our lockdown era, ‘Commune’ can also be read in terms of a deeper urge to re-engage with sometimes neglected ideals and beliefs. ‘Bethel Woods’ sustains and develops that reconnection, evoking the steadfast and contemplative urgency of The Trials of Van Occupanther to back a lyric steeped in yearning for a paradisal time and place of hope and optimism. Soaring guitars and atmospheric noise effects extend a sonic scope further developed by ‘Glistening,’ where arpeggios dance like light glancing off a lake. In just three songs, Midlake reintroduce themselves and reach out into fresh territory with a richly intuitive dynamism, honoring their past as a seedbed of possibility. The result is a powerful, warming expression of resolve and renewal for Midlake, opening up new futures for the band and honoring their storied history. An album of thematic and sonic reach with a warm, wise sense of intimacy at its heart, an album to break bread and commune with, honor the past and travel onwards with. In ‘Bethel Woods’, Pulido sings of gathering seeds. On For the Sake of Bethel Woods, those seeds are lovingly nurtured, taking rich and spectacular bloom.
Midlake is: Eric Pulido, Eric Nichelson, McKenzie Smith, Jesse Chandler, and Joey McClellan.
# # # PRAISE FOR MIDLAKE AND FOR THE SAKE OF BETHEL WOODS: “Between the concepts and soundscape, there is plenty to chew on. The professionalism and classy production by John Congleton create Midlake’s sense of camaraderie, mystery, and imagination. It’s an impressive return for a band many assumed might not reappear.” – AMERICAN SONGWRITER “Another gorgeous long-player, uniquely Midlake in their signature, highly orchestrated mix of '70s soft rock, prog, spacerock, komische, and folk…This is Midlake's best since 2006's The Trials of Van Occupanther, and in some ways it's better. They keep the mossy earthtones and fondness for vintage synths, mellotrons, flutes and lush vocal harmonies, but mostly jettison the lyrical preoccupations with the lives of people in 1891, for the here and now and personal. For the Sake of Bethel Woods doesn't feel like a history lesson, it feels like a homecoming.” – BROOKLYN VEGAN "A deeply dynamic record and one that has the broadest scope of influences of any Midlake album to date." – THE GUARDIAN “An album of great ambition with eleven expansive and shifting arrangements.” – THE QUIETUS
“Layered, sophisticated and melodic.” – MOJO (****) “Texan folk-rockers return in leaner, more dynamic form... For The Sake Of Bethel Woods secures Midlake’s future with small yet significant shifts, running clearer and on a newly energized course.” – UNCUT (7/10) “While 1970s-influenced folk rock is still their foundation, songs such as ‘Noble’ meander gracefully around sighing electronics and fractured guitars.” – THE GUARDIAN “Their fifth album is perhaps their most purely enjoyable. The album mulls over time, illness and innocence, while the sprits of Neil Young and Stephen Stills set the temperature. It’s especially elegant around its mid-section (Feast Of Carrion, Noble)” – CLASSIC ROCK (8/10)
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MIDLAKE TOUR 2022
JUNE 5 – Santa Fe, NM – Meow Wolf 7 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom 8 – Joshua Tree, CA – Pappy & Harriet’s 10 – Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour 11 – Sonoma, CA – Huichica Festival * 12 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel 15 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge 16 – Seattle, WA – The Triple Door 17 – Vancouver, BC – Hollywood Theatre 19 – Salt Lake City, UT – The State Room 21 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
SEPTEMBER 4 – Birmingham, UK – Moseley Folk Festival 6 – Istanbul, TU – 100% Studio
OCTOBER 27 – Norwich, UK – The Waterfront 28 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club 30 – Bristol, UK – Trinity Centre 31 – Cambridge, UK – Junction
NOVEMBER 2 – Utrecht, NL – Ronda 3 – Bruges, BE – Cactus Club 4 – Groningen, NL – De Oosterpoort 6 – Copenhagen, DK – Pumpehuset 7 – Stockholm, SW – Nalen 8 – Oslo, NO – Vulkan Arena 9 – Gothenburg, SW – Pustervik
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MIDLAKE FOR THE SAKE OF BETHEL WOODS (ATO Records) | 
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