Midlake - Late Night Tales

We could all do with an invitation to compile our own ‘Late Night Tales’. It’s a stellar opportunity to show the world just how hip your taste is when you put your mind to trying to prove just how hip your taste is. A trawl through your iTunes might pull up more B*Witched and Keane than is strictly legal, but with a few hours to fake your musical personality, you can make a mix that oozes integrity and cool. Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Over 10 years, artists ranging from Groove Armada to Arctic sticksman Matt Helders have taken advantage of ‘Late Night Tales” loose remit to show there’s more to them than plastic, second-rate dance music or natty tracksuit tops, and the results have been both impressive and revealing (and, naturally, very tasteful). So have Midlake taken their cue to expose a fierce, secret love of clownstep and hair metal? Yes, they have.

Sorry, no – no, they haven’t. The Texan folk-rockers use their ‘Late Night Tales’ to tell us pretty much what we already knew: they like their folk, rock and smooth 70s curios. The lack of huge surprises is no minus though, because the mix perfectly evokes the small-hours intimacy of the series and does so with a clutch of beautifully sequenced, splendid tunes. The glaringly obvious – The Band’s delicate ‘Whispering Pines’, Fairport Convention standard ‘Genesis Hall’ – is simply necessary; the less well-traveled – Rodriguez’s folky-funky ‘Crucify Your Mind’ – is a little treat.

Along the way, there’s a raft of mellow joys in Scott Walker’s stately ‘Copenhagen’, the rootsy pop of Edinburgh’s Bread, Love & Dreams’ ‘Time’s The Thief’ and Sandy Denny’s brooding ‘Carnival’, and there’s even a chance for a singalong on Twice As Much And Vashti’s ‘Coldest Night Of The Year’. Midlake themselves bowl a googly with a cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘Am I Going Insane’ – but, yes, they’ve given it a folk-rock makeover. Well, a splash of Satanic metal would’ve mucked up the chilled-out vibes (man).

That earthy ambience is well-maintained as Midlake’s choices hit the spot, but if we’re going to split beard hairs, then maybe Björk’s ‘Unravel’ is a touch familiar and we’ve all heard enough Beach House to last us until the next ubiquitous album. Off the beaten track too, there’s a jarring moment as Will Self hoves to with his monologue ‘The Happy Detective Part 4’. It’s hilarious – mainly down to Self’s hammy American accent – but a mood-killer. Still, this is Midlake’s show, and with this honest slice of musical psyche they’ve earned the right to fill their C90 with any novelty they like.