Antiphon

Album: Antiphon (2013)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Midlake spent much of 2011 and 2012 painstakingly recording their fourth album at the farm in Buffalo, Texas where The Courage Of Others was tracked. However the perfectionism of frontman and songwriter Tim Smith was increasingly frustrating the rest of the group and in late 2012 he announced that he was leaving Midlake to form a new project called Harp. The question arose as to how would the remaining four members (Eric Pulido, McKenzie Smith, Paul Alexander and Eric Nichelson) manage without Smith's songs?

    "Of what we'd recorded," Pulido told Mojo magazine, "Tim had said, 'You can have this…' but what we couldn't take with us turned out to be 75% of the recording." The solution was to begin again from scratch, and the quartet wrote and recorded a new full-length album in just six months. Pulido said that they titled it Antiphon, "because it means a response to an oratory or piece of music, and this album is a response to what's gone on with Tim. The original Antiphon was an orator in Ancient Greece who was part of an oligarchy that fought democracy. But we didn't overthrow Tim! He's not Antiphon."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Paul Williams

Paul WilliamsSongwriter Interviews

He's a singer and an actor, but as a songwriter Paul helped make Kermit a cultured frog, turned a bank commercial into a huge hit and made love both "exciting and new" and "soft as an easy chair."

Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees

Jack Blades of Night Ranger and Damn YankeesSongwriter Interviews

Revisit the awesome glory of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees: cheesily-acted videos, catchy guitar licks, long hair, and lyrics that are just plain relatable.

Glen Ballard

Glen BallardSongwriter Interviews

Glen Ballard talks about co-writing and producing Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill album, and his work with Dave Matthews, Aerosmith and Annie Lennox.

Randy Newman

Randy NewmanSongwriting Legends

Newman makes it look easy these days, but in this 1974 interview, he reveals the paranoia and pressures that made him yearn for his old 9-5 job.

They Might Be Giants

They Might Be GiantsSongwriter Interviews

Who writes a song about a name they found in a phone book? That's just one of the everyday things these guys find to sing about. Anything in their field of vision or general scope of knowledge is fair game. If you cross paths with them, so are you.

Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike + The Mechanics)

Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike + The Mechanics)Songwriter Interviews

Mike Rutherford talks about the "Silent Running" storyline and "Land Of Confusion" in the age of Trump.