Song 99: Head Home

I still listen to Midlake's 'The Trials of Van Occupanther' often. It's one of my favourite albums, and a very underrated one, I think.

It was acclaimed in specific circles on its release, in 2006, but it's not something you often see in retrospective lists. It was, I think, more of a "hit" in the UK than the US, and it is fair to say it is, at most, a minor cult album.

'Head Home' is the third of eleven tracks. I wouldn't say, though I do love it, it's one of my absolute favourite songs on the album - those would be 'Roscoe', 'Van Occupanther', 'Branches' and 'Chasing After Deer'. Still, 'Head Home', as I'll explain, is the one I want to write about.

What were, and are, Midlake? They began as a band of jazz students, at their most there have been seven of them, the main singer/songwriter until 2012 was called Tim Smith, they make American folk-rock with strong British influences.

They're still going, and have made a couple of pretty good albums since Tim Smith left. He released his first album as Harp in 2023.

Not too much is known about Smith - he seems a pretty reticent frontman. Nevertheless, '...Van Occupanther' is marked out by its singular character. It is, conceptually, one man's vision.

If I'm to give a pat summary of the three albums he made with Midlake - their debut, 'Bamnan and Slivercork' is in the sky, 'The Courage of Others', from 2010, is deep underground, and '... van Occupanther' is on the surface of the earth.

As much as people commented on the brilliant musicianship, the folk and prog influences, the historical and ecological bent, it grabbed me because it made a connection. It was sad, soulful and touching.

There's a fellow on twitter called Scott Innes who traffics in general witty good vibes, often via the medium of photographs of football managers, and I noted his favourite album is '...Van Occupanther'. He wrote once about the appeal of lines like "Let me not be too consumed with this world, Sometimes I want to go home and stay out of sight for a long time".

The album is full of lines like that, slightly off-kilter but weirdly moving.

"Whenever I was a child I wondered what if my name had changed into something more productive like Roscoe, been born in 1891, waiting with my Aunt Roseline"

"We won't get married, cos she won't have me, she wakes up awfully early these days"

"Did you ever want to run around with bandits to see many places and hide in ditches. It's not always easy, it's not always easy"

"They told me I wouldn't but I found an answer, I'm Van Occupanther, I'm Van Occupanther"

"there's someone I'd like to see. She never mentions a word to me, she reads Leviathan"

and

"I think I'll head home".

'Head Home' turned out to be the crowd-pleaser. More even than the band's most talked- about song and lead single 'Roscoe', it was 'Head Home' that really had the crowd going on the handful of occasions I watched Midlake at the festivals.

It borders on the anthemic and also allowed for an extended guitar twiddle towards the end. This was Midlake's few minutes as rock gods.

I remember watching them, second on the bill on the main stage at End of the Road in 2011, rocking out with their lank hair and studious beards, thinking "wow, this is really something. Maybe these guys could be big after all."

It wasn't to be. Tim Smith left the band not long afterwards, midway through recording an album that was scrapped - they held together pretty well, with another member, Eric Pulido, on lead vocals, and, to be honest, that was a slightly false moment of grandeur. A certain amount of interest from a mid-sized crowd, second on the bill, Sunday at End of the Road, is not being the centre of the musical world on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.

Still, that was, I suppose, the precise centre of my musical world. I've looked at the bill for End of the Road that year (a festival which started out in the mid-2000s taking about 5000 people, went up to  around 15000 and is still going strong) - Midlake, James Yorkston, The Walkmen, Laura Marling, Joanna Newsom, Gruff Rhys, not to mention The Fall, Mogwai, Beirut, The Staves, Emmy the Great, The Unthanks, Joan as Police Woman, Lykke Li, Tinariwen, Best Coast, Willy Mason, Micah P Hinson, Brakes and The Leisure Society. I doubt that there are many people other than me that think about half the great songs of the 21st century  emerged from that underperforming bunch.

So, Midlake, then, with what, as I reach the end of this piece, I feel a bit more confident to say is a better album than 'Pet Sounds', Rumours' and 'After the Goldrush' -  'The Trials of Van Occupanther'. With 'Head Home' which I always think of whenever I want to head home, which is often.

Incidentally, in the past couple of days, I listened, for the first time in ages, to the follow-up to 'Occupanther', 'The Courage of Others', which was generally deemed a disappointment, including by me. It was heavier, more impenetrable, and just didn't quite have the human magic. I did listen to it a lot, though, for a couple of weeks, and I remember it came out in the week I moved into my studio flat in Tooting in 2010, and was, for a short period of time, without Sky TV, without internet (no smartphone then) and a few other of the general trappings of modern life. Pathetically, that's as close as I've come to a Midlake-like existence in the past decade and a half. Anyway, listening back to 'The Courage of Others', it has plenty to like. Perhaps Midlake's time is still to come.