Spoiler alert! The new Midlake record is not from the band that you grew to love with The Trials Of Van Occupanther. With each successive album, the members of Midlake transformed, foregrounding a different favorite section of their record collections. Now comes Antiphon (ATO), which announces itself with an opening title track that rocks harder and more insistently than anything in the group’s prior catalog. Midlake again sounds like a new band. And, this time it is: It’s Midlake’s first since the departure of principal singer/songwriter Tim Smith, its first with guitarist Eric Pulido stepping into those lead roles, its first with former touring members Jesse Chandler (keyboards, flute) and Joey McClellan (guitars) officially joining drummer Mackenzie Smith, multi-instrumentalist Paul Alexander and guitarist Eric Nichelson. Chandler and Nichelson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Midlake feature.
Chandler: The Night Of The Hunter, from 1955, directed by Charles Laughton and written by Laughton and James Agee, is one of my all-time favorite films. It kind of flew under the radar at the time it was released, and sadly it was the only film Laughten ever directed. It’s sort of a darkly weird film with Robert Mitchem doing a brilliant job as the villain, Rev. Harry Powell. It’s creepy at times, and the cinematography is gorgeous. The scene where the children are floating down a stream on a raft through a forest and you see silhouettes of animals and trees and wildlife is one of the most amazing sequences ever to me.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5AKK_om1VU
