[Cover photo credit to Barbara FG]
Midlake are currently on a US tour, and have shared a video for the new single “Exile”, from their new album, For The Sake Of Bethel Woods, released in March via ATO Records. The new clip features content filmed across the band’s recent UK/EU April tour.
From the cover to the title and beyond, the new record is about “a longing to reconnect with that which seems lost” and the cover features keyboardist/flautist Jesse Chandler’s father, who, tragically, passed away in 2018.
As singer Eric Pulido explains:
He was a lovely human, and it was really heavy and sad, and he came to Jesse in a dream. I reference it in a song. He said, ‘Hey, Jesse, you need to get the band back together.’ I didn’t take that lightly. We had already had these feelings with everyone in the band of, oh, this could be a cool thing to do. But the dream was a kind of beautiful depiction of a purpose to reconvene and make music together as friends.
The cover image is based on a photo taken from the 1970 documentary Woodstock. In 1969, Jesse’s then-16-year-old dad had joined a friend and hitchhiked from Ridgewood, New Jersey, to the legendary festival. Raised in Woodstock after his father moved there in 1981, Jesse later paid a pilgrimage to Bethel Woods with his father; there, the elder Chandler recorded an audio account of his festival experience in the museum’s public database.
Chandler adds:
So for me, the picture of that kid, my dad, forever frozen in time, encapsulates what it means to be in the throes of impressionable and fleeting youth, and all that the magic of music, peace, love and communion bring to it, whether one knows it at the time or not.
MIDLAKE TOUR 2022
JUNE
5 – Santa Fe, NM – Meow Wolf
7 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom
8 – Joshua Tree, CA – Pappy & Harriet’s
10 – Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
11 – Sonoma, CA – Huichica Festival *
12 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel
15 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
16 – Seattle, WA – The Triple Door
17 – Vancouver, BC – Hollywood Theatre
19 – Salt Lake City, UT – The State Room
21 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
SEPTEMBER
4 – Birmingham, UK – Moseley Folk Festival
6 – Istanbul, TU – 100% Studio
OCTOBER
27 – Norwich, UK – The Waterfront
28 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
30 – Bristol, UK – Trinity Centre
31 – Cambridge, UK – Junction
NOVEMBER
2 – Utrecht, NL – Ronda
3 – Bruges, BE – Cactus Club
4 – Groningen, NL – De Oosterpoort
6 – Copenhagen, DK – Pumpehuset
7 – Stockholm, SW – Nalen
8 – Oslo, NO – Vulkan Arena
9 – Gothenburg, SW – Pustervik
