2. MidlakeThe Trials Of Van Occupanther
I just knew that this was a classic as soon as I heard it. If I’m going to be really hyper-critical of it, then it’s about three songs off from bring a true classic but there are so many great songs on there. It just felt like the first record I’d heard for a long time – maybe since Figure 8 by Elliot Smith – which is a really complete classic album. You know, I was thinking that this was a record that should’ve been there when I raided my uncle’s record collection when I was 13, alongside Neil Young and Patti Smith and JJ Cale and Sex Pistols and The Trials Of Van Occupanther is one of those. That’s the highest praise that I can give it; that it should sit amongst those greats.
What an amazing record with a really amazing sound. Tim Smith’s voice is brilliant to listen to and lyrically it’s such an emotive record. You really hear the visual setting that the music is set against and that just pours off the record and out of the grooves. I loved it from the first minute I heard it. And there’s something about the aesthetics of it that I really connected with. Technically, I love the bass sound and the sound of the snare and we in Supergrass really gravitated towards that. It’s like the first time you hear that snare sound on Air’s Moon Safari and we were like: ‘That’s the snare sound that we really love too!’
You know, when you’re in a band you look around at other bands. We listened a lot to Elliott Smith when we made Road To Rouen and when you have that connection, then it takes the album to a whole different level. That’s what we all felt with the Midlake record, and me and my brother Charlie definitely rate it in the top five records of the last ten or fifteen years.
