Now when I first got asked to review this CD, I went and checked Midlake’s MySpace out and I can’t lie, I was just a bit scared about how it was going to sound. Everything on their MySpace gave me this sick feeling in my stomach and made me want to roll my eyes. The vocals were all beautiful. I loved that and I think acoustically all of the songs would have sounded amazing, but what was up had all of these background noises (it was a lot of obvious fake sounds mixed with very little actual guitar or drums or anything else that I would consider ‘real’) that just screamed we’re just trying to be a pretentious indie band. It wasn’t that it was absolutely horrible it was just too much for my poor stomach to handle, but hey some people like that sort of stuff, and if that’s your bag, that’s your bag, I won’t judge you.

Now as skeptical as I was before I even got the CD, I swore I would at least give it a chance. A chance I do have to say that it at the very least earned. I turned it on (metaphorically of course, after all you don’t really turn on iTunes, and really, who uses anything but iTunes anymore?) and was actually quite surprised. I expected more eye-rolling indie music but what I got was much, much more folky. While there are some remnants of the rest it is much less blatant, enough of an undertone on the record to be tolerable. It went from something you’d expect your run of the mill pretentious hipster to listen to something much more pleasing on the ears. It’s the sort of thing I’d want to listen to if I was walking through a forest alone or just needed to calm down and hang out in my apartment in the dark and relax. It did give me an almost amusing feeling like I should be watching the movie Robin Hood. It has a very old world guitar feeling to it in the background that reminded me just of how lutes sound in many old period pieces.

There were a few songs that still made me roll my eyes a little with their intros, but for the most part if you could get past the first 15 seconds, it was all good. This CD isn’t necessarily something I’d go out of my way to listen to, but I wouldn’t skip past it if it came up on shuffle on my iPod either. I’d recommend at least giving the CD a try if you’re into more folky. There’d certainly be no harm in it.

Track Listing:

1. Acts Of Man
2. Winter Dies
3. Small Mountain
4. Core Of Nature
5. Fortune
6. Rulers, Ruling All Things
7. Children Of The Grounds
8. Bring Down
9. The Horn
10. The Courage Of Others
11. In The Ground

Written by Hanna Marie Pageau

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