Went to see Midlake and Rogue Wave last Friday night at the opera house with some friends ...and no Derek was not with us as some members of the book club suspected...

Midlake was fantastic, thoroughly enjoyed the show...Rogue wave was not very exciting,
kind of mid tempo indie rock without a interesting sound or decent hooks, perhaps they are better on disc..

After the show we went to a bar nearby and met the lead members of Midlake..I realise that most of you will not believe me due to my earlier Don henley prank, but I have witnesses to prove it and lets face it Midlake is not exactly at the superstar level)..

It was great because I find the change of songwriting from the Fleetwood Mac-escque 2nd album, to the fairport convention-esque 3rd album quite abrupt and not exactly a great comercially driven decision because aside from myself and a few other deluded fellow lovers of british folk rock , this is unlikely to light a fire with todays youth. This was evident in the only half full house in attendance.

So I put it as politley as I could to the lead songwriter; as to why the abrupt change is sound between the albums.. I was expecting that he would say someone introduced him to the sounds of fairport cionvention or the solo carrers of denny or thompson, or steeleye span / pentangle etc....hoping to get into a great discussion on the severly neglected merits of this era.

His response was that they toured with Espers last year.... Espers is a band I also logically love and have many discs of because they too are heavily indebted to this era of music,( well worth checking out if you dont know them) but they are a very youing band too...
I got the sense that the Midlake dude has still not really checked out these old masters...
perhaps this is best as the Midlake take is less a clone of this sound due to its subsequent filtering through Espers ...

interesting never the less...