The old town square looks like it was bought wholesale from a American movie set. Facing the elegant courthouse on the snow-covered lawn (yes, there's bad weather in Texas, too) beneath which the town's founder lies buried, Denton's low buildings house an eccentric mix of establishments ranging from a fake-medieval pub to a pawn shop that sells only acoustic instruments and guns.
Denton is a small town – around 62 square miles, which in Texas terms is a doormat – with a population of around 115,000, who all appear to be either students or artists. According to the US music magazine Paste – which two years ago gave its Best New Music Scene award to this unassuming North Texas burg located 40 miles from Dallas – Denton boasts one-and-a-half performing musicians per square mile. As with Austin, Denton didn't so much breed them as lure them in. Its two universities both have substantial arts departments, and one is famous for its jazz school. What made so many stick around after they graduated was the cheap housing and a growing number of places to play.
Tim Smith, Midlake's singer and songwriter, came here from San Antonio in South Texas to study for a degree in saxophone. As the new millennium rolled in, it found him playing in a jazz-funk quintet with fellow jazz school students McKenzie Smith (drums), Paul Alexander (bass, keyboards), Eric Nichelson (keyboards, guitar) and Evan Jacobs (keyboards). They called themselves the Cornbread Allstars, after the other Denton landmark, a cornmeal factory, and specialised in 30-minute jams.
And then one day McKenzie played Tim a Björk album – "and some other bands I'd never really checked out – Led Zeppelin, Radiohead. It's not something you …" He searches for the words to explain. "I was like 26 years old, and you have 13 years of playing saxophone, and jazz is your life, all your albums are jazz, and I never even thought of going in that direction. But I stopped listening to jazz, I just felt I'd rather put on Radiohead than Coltrane. And I picked up a little bit of guitar – I could barely play it; saxophone is cool but I wish I had picked up a guitar and checked out Black Sabbath in high school – and I wrote a song. And I knew I wanted to go in that direction. We knew we wanted a male vocalist, but he never came, so everyone said, 'Well why don't you just keep singing in the meantime until we find someone else?'" His voice drops to a whisper.
"We're still looking for one," laughs Eric Pulido, the last full-time member to join; he replaced Jacobs (who left for Austin and his own band, as well as a stint with Polyphonic Spree) shortly after Midlake recorded their debut EP in 2001, to give themselves something to sell at shows.
If they find a singer, will Smith become the band's Brian Wilson and stay home in the studio writing songs? He smiles shyly. "I'd be happy with that."
The day I fly into Denton, Midlake are getting ready for their UK tour – 14 dates at last count, most of which have sold out – and their studio, which is barely a block away from the town square, is a hive of activity, with band members and friends taking care of last-minute details, packing bags and stencilling "Midlake" on the instrument flight cases. It's a cosy place, domesticated almost – none of the usual rock detritus of bottles, ashtrays and pizza boxes. There are brocade curtains, flock wallpaper, a couple of framed tapestries, and, balanced on the picture rails around the room, a succession of 12" albums.
Pretty much every one of them is 70s soft rock of varying degrees of cool: Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dan Fogelberg, Seals & Crofts, Elton John, Jimmie Spheeris, Jethro Tull. That last one aside – the band have hired a flute player for this tour, Jesse Chandler, who, with electric guitarist Max Townsley, takes their number to seven – this display nods more at their last album, 2007's The Trials of Van Occupanther, than its long-awaited follow-up, The Courage of Others.
Van Occupanther – the soft-focus, exquisitely constructed album that put them high on the UK indie charts and on music critics' year-end lists – sounded like 1970s southern California harmony rock with a dollop of Grandaddy and Mercury Rev. But in the three years it took to complete The Courage of Others, the band have moved on, or perhaps moved back, to the British folk-rock of the 60s. In his forays into thrift shops and second-hand record stores over the last few years, Smith discovered bands such as Steeleye Span, Pentangle and Fairport Convention, and it shows.
"With me not coming from a well-rounded background in rock music or anything, all of this was new to me," Smith says. "I'd never heard Crosby, Stills & Nash before, or Elton John or Jethro Tull, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. So with Van Occupanther I just thought wow, I really like this 70s sound, there's something magical about the stuff, and I really connected with it, so we had to go in that direction. I didn't want to change the sound or anything, the sound is fine. I don't mind if we don't change or evolve. But it's kind of …" he fumbles for the right word, "an accident. I was buying cheap vinyl, just based on the covers really, but then you listen to them and you start finding out about all the other bands. You just start to fall in love with a kind of music that I'd never really heard before. And I just had to show the band, you know, this will be the new sound, this is the kind of direction I'd like to get a bit more of in our sound."
That sound, from what Smith says, took them three years of solid work to get – and at just the time when the band were getting their biggest buzz. Asked if it was infuriating having their frontman and songwriter come in with piles of British vinyl, confiscating their keyboards and leading then to a more ruminative, monochromatic sound, his bandmates shake their heads. Smith is "definitely the creative leader," says McKenzie, "but we're very much a band. Every time he brings us a song, if everybody was unenthusiastic about it, we would just tell him, but usually we're excited about them and we just try to make it sound as good as we can and get to the same place."
"And it's difficult to guess what people are thinking," says Pulido, "or the repercussions of us taking this long. In the perfect world, if we could have made this record in a month, we would have; it wasn't as if we wanted to take as long as we did. But we wanted to feel right about it. We knew it wasn't going to be done overnight. But at the end of the day it's something we want to feel good about, and hopefully those people that are fans will still be there."
Smith agrees. "I'd rather have the diehard fans, the people who really like what you do, it doesn't matter how long you take." And, as anyone who's followed them from the outset knows, they've not exactly rushed out any of their records. Three years passed between the release of their EP Milkmaid Grand Army in 2001 – a record Smith says he's "not proud of, because you can hear all our influences: Rufus Wainwright, Clinic, a little bit of Radiohead" – and their first album proper, 2004's synthesiser-rock-meets-psychedelic-folk Bamnan and Slivercork. And three more passed before they returned with Van Occupanther.
Since the tour for that album ended, Midlake have spent most of the time here in their rented HQ. They'd come in at eight or nine every morning, as if they were going to the office, then leave at five to go home to their wives and girlfriends, children and dogs. Often as not, after dinner they'd be back here working again. Says Pulido, "we have treated it like a regular job for the last couple of years."
But an unpaid one; how do they live? "That comes back to Denton again. It's pretty cheap living here – but it has been a strain. Most of us are married, so it's good to have a second income. Also, most of us still have one foot in with other things we can do for money, whether it be giving music lessons or other musical ventures, or just past jobs we've had here and there," ranging from Smith's guest spot with the Chemical Brothers to Pulido's Christmas record with Robert Gomez, and McKenzie's and Alexander's recent gigs with St Vincent and Regina Spektor. The band also produced and played on a new album by John Grant, former singer with the Czars.
"We've almost run out of money several times," says McKenzie, but something by the grace of God just happens and we squeak by. But we're definitely all looking forward to touring again."
