Midlake at the Concorde

Midlake - Brighton Concorde2

With some of our friends currently in Thailand celebrating the Songkran (water) festival, Andy and I have decided to have an alternative 'Song-cram' festival which involves us throwing beer down our throats and trying to blag into as many gigs as we can over the next few days. Our first event was Midlake at the Concorde on Thursday night, a welcome second sighting following on from their date at London's ULU last year. The venue was packed out and we ended up at the back near the merch desk; now I expect a certain amount of chatter back there, and normally it's not a big issue, but with Midlake's quieter songs (and indeed throughout Stephanie Dosen's support slot) I found it really distracting and annoying. For once I was actually yearning for a seated show... I rather missed the accompanying videos that we had in London, and any banter with the crowd was kept to a minimum, but that aside, the band sounded good. Young Bride and Head Home in particular stood out for me and they also debuted a rocking new track which bodes well for their next album.