My December listening: 'Albion' by Harp

I became a supporter of the Texan retro-folk-prog-rock band Midlake about the time of their 2006 breakthrough album The trials of Van Occupanther when one of its tracks was included in one of the sampler CDs that came with the much-missed Word magazine.

It was described as drawing on 1970s soft-rock, but it to me it felt more a Fairport Convention/Strawbs/Stackridge kind of thing. So I was a little surprised when reviewers commented that their follow-up The courage of others was a move in the direction of British folk-rock. While there had been a certain evolution, it seemed to me they had always been there or thereabouts.

Then a strange thing happened - as they were recording their next album the lead singer Tim Smith announced he was leaving. Strange because one sort-of assumed that Smith essentially was Midlake, or at least the band was a vehicle for his songs and would consist of the musicians he chose to play with. After all he wrote and sang all the material with no other member getting so much as a co-writer credit. While other groups have continued after the departure of a leading creative force, it's almost unheard of when the force is quite this dominant. It would be rather as though Mark rather than David Knopfler had left Dire Straits after Making Movies and the band had carried on without him. Or perhaps, more appositely given the nature of Midlake's oeuvre like Jethro Tull minus Ian Anderson.

So it was a surprise to learn back in 2013 that the residual members were carrying on and intending to release a new album. How could this be the same band. Couldn't they be done under trades descriptions legislation. Three seemed to be three possibilities, none of them good: that they would be little more than a tribute band rehashing or reworking old material; that they would be a pastiche act, with new material that was an uninspired imitation of their former leader; or that they would sound nothing like the old Midlake but a different band altogether.

So when the fourth Midlake album Antiphon appeared in 2013 I approached it with no great hopes. And yet it was a mini-triumph. Guitarist Eric Pulido, who stepped up to the lead singer's microphone, sounded enough like Tim Smith that his voice was not jarring, but also he didn't sound like he was going an impersonation. The sound had clearly evolved to a heavier prog-rock style, but this wasn't the band's first sonic evolution and they still sounded like Midlake. And there were a clutch of decent songs that were sufficiently in the Tim Smith mould (tender, wistful lyrics with bucolic imagery), and it followed the first three Midlake albums in having a very strong first half, but a few longeurs towards the end.

In the intervening decade the members of Midlake embarked on various creditable side projects before the band last year with an excellent fifth offering For the sake of Bethel Woods - a reference to the site of the original Woodstock festival. So well done chaps!

Meanwhile we waited to see what Tim Smith had to offer. Soon after leaving Midlake he announced a new project Harp, whose website was updated occasionally over the next decade usually with apologies for the continuing delay in producing new music. I had almost given up but when checking the site earlier this year saw the debut Harp album Albion was due for released at the start of December.

As the title suggests it has a very British (specifically English) feel, with song titles such as Daughters of Albion, Herstmonceux (a village and castle near Eastbourne) and Shining spires. Paradoxically it manages to go further in the folky direction than the last Tim Smith led Midlake album but the listener can't help but notice the presence of electronic drums, presumably a contribution of Smith's wife and collaborator Kathi Zung, who is credited as co-writer of the album.

Given the long wait I hoped it would be the epic statement that Smith could only make by having full creative control. Instead it is lovely but slight, the songs averaging around three-and-a-half minutes, the vocals a little too low down in the mix for the lyrics to make an impact. While the Guardian reviewer says it 'plants the hopeful seeds of something yet to bloom', I thought this might be the great blossoming, but like previous Midlake and related albums it falls a little short. Still, with its wintery atmosphere, it has been a pleasing accompaniment to December.

Wonder Boys: a little-known gem

Who is the only person to have won both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature?

Many years ago I remember preening myself on having answered this question correctly in a quiz. I didn't know the answer, but worked out that George Bernard Shaw was a likely choice. He had definitely won the Nobel Prize and it seemed at least plausible that one of his plays had become a film script or even that he had written a screenplay. (And indeed it was for adopting Pygmalion for the silver screen so a bit of both.)

Pride comes before a fall though, and on a visit to Shaw's Corner a few years ago I came a cropper trying to impress one of the National Trust volunteers by offering up this piece of arcane knowledge. 'No longer true' he said and I racked my brains trying to work out who else had managed this feat. The embarrassment was complete when I was told the answer 'Bob Dylan' as I am a diehard fan of His Bobness. I knew he had won an Oscar for Things have changed and could hardly have missed the controversy over his 2026 Nobel Literature Prize Award, indeed even going so far as to respond to a blog post on the subject. But I hadn't quite put the two things together.

Ever curious about the minutiae of Dylan's career, I recently found myself wondering why, despite regarding Things have changed as one of Dylan's best ever songs (and his Oscar as well deserved as his Nobel Prize), I knew nothing about the film he had won it for, maybe not even the title. So I looked it up and discovered why. Wonder Boys, which starred Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr and Tobey Maguire, was praised by critics but was a box office failure. It is referred to by various bloggers and the like as a hidden gem.

Douglas is cast in an untypical (unlikely even) role of a professor of creative writing who is struggling to follow up his successful first novel, while attempting to mentor a troubled student and (inevitably) having a complicated private life. It was described as an amusing and realistic portrayal of campus life. In our household's not always straightforward search for films we might both enjoy watching, this comedy drama of campus life seemed to fit the bill. There's also always something enjoyable about discovering and championing a film (or indeed any artistic creation) that didn't quite get its due.

It proved a good choice, although one can see exactly why it pleased the critics but did not attract the punters. It is maybe a little too low key. The plot, with its redemptive theme, trots along nicely, the characters well-drawn and convincing, the jokes and humorous scenes consistently funny. Yet it is touching rather than seriously emotionally affecting and gently amusing rather than outright hilarious.

As I've mentioned before, one of my current hobbies is tracking down cultural experiences of one kind or another that I've missed and Wonder Boys was certainly worth seeking out.

Hello Yellow Brick Road

Continuing the Watford FC theme, I see that following a campaign by Hornets supporter Roy Moore, Mayor Peter Taylor has arranged for Watford Council to agree the renaming of Occupation Road, which runs alongside the Elton John stand at Vicarage Road stadiums, as the Yellow Brick Road