Buy Tickets Now: Midlake @ ABC, 15 Feb

Post-Yuletide blues? Struggling to raise yourself for the never-ending misery of January mornings? Well, listen up, because Midlake are like an aural hot water bottle: warm, soothing, cosy and gentle. Astonishingly, it has been three and a half years since the sweet harmonies of The Trials of Van Occupanther slowly but surely buried themselves into the consciousness of anyone who heard it. Progress reports have reflected on a directional change on album number three, The Courage of Others, commenting on a nod to British folk of the 60s. Everything’s crossed that they can scale the heights of 2006, making winter a little more bearable.

Video: Midlake - Some Of Them Were Superstitious



Written for The Skinny

Five of the Best - an Introduction

How do you succinctly summarise a decade in music in a few paragraphs? Well, you don’t, in my opinion. The last ten years have seen so many zeitgeists, so many trends and so many amazing moments in music, it would be futile to try. What’s been good and what’s been bad is of course completely subjective: everybody has their two cents to throw in. And whilst we’ll all read, dissect and argue over the lists that appear online and in print over the coming two months, they’re unlikely to represent any one person’s decade in music.

This is a series I’ll be running on the blog which will give individuals whose musical opinions I respect the chance to do exactly that: to tell us what music they’ll be taking forward from the noughties. What albums have resonated with them more than others? What records remind them of a particular time in their lives over the past ten years? They may not be the best albums of the past decade, but what albums were important to you?

Please feel free to leave comments after the posts. What albums would you have chosen?