Roscoe

from the LP The Trials of Van Occupanther, Bella Union Records, 2006



This band got together thanks in large part to the Northern Texas School of Music, as all five guys had been students there. This track is the opener on their second full-length album, and it introduces the new path their music has taken with aplomb; where they previously built their reputation upon a lo-fi, neo-psych foundation (which doesn’t totally dissolve here), this song leaves no question as to what time period they have leapt into--- the mid ‘70s. Although this album partially gets pegged as Laurel Canyon revivalism, which it most definitely is, this song really assembles the influences in a brooding and masterful way; I hear Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, some Firefall… The harmony that Tim Smith and Eric Pulido fashion throughout this mix is divine, and it absolutely obliges the listener to paint their own picture of the ancestral tale, “…stonecutters made them from stones, chosen specially for you and I, who will live inside…and now when the rain comes, we can be thankful…” A nice bridge, care of Mr. Smith on the piano, leads us much deeper into the story, “…the village used to be all one really needs; that’s (now) filled with hundreds and hundreds of chemicals…whenever I was a child, I wondered, what if my name had changed into something more productive, like Roscoe, been born in 1891, waiting with my Aunt Rosaline…” I like going to ghost-towns up in the mountains around here, and although I don’t really believe in “ghosts” per say, there is no denying the energy and vibes which permeate areas that used to be bustling mining encampments. You just sit inside the dregs of these old towns, silent, letting the wind stir up memories you can’t possibly have but your DNA still remembers, the history, the hardship, the sense of adventure, “…the newness, the newness of all…” It’s a humbling thing, walking over the vestiges of our own pasts, trying in vain to fathom a life once lived. I like to think I would’ve had the balls to venture out west, live in the wild, eschew the same stale rules I’m still trying to avoid in the postmodern nightmare of now; or as they put it, “oh, they’re a little like you, and they’re a little like me…” Proving themselves capable of a total shift in musical scope without sacrificing any of their playfulness, Midlake triumph here as modern-day storytellers.