Midlake announce first album in 10 years, share “Meanwhile…”

Midlake will be back with For The Sake of Bethel Woods, their first new album in nearly a decade, on March 22 via ATO/Bella Union. Their fifth album, it marks the first time the band have worked with an outside producer, John Congleton, who also engineered and mixed the album.

The album is named for the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival and the town is where flautist/keyboard player Jesse Chandler grew up. The album cover is an illustration based on his father at the original Woodstock. “At age 16 my father and his friend hitchhiked from Ridgewood, NJ to the Woodstock festival in 1969,” says Chandler. “This image of him with his hand to his face appears in the 1970 Woodstock documentary, as the camera pans across the crowd during John Sebastian’s set. My father actually ended up moving to Woodstock, NY – where I grew up – in 1981. For me, the picture of that kid, my dad, forever frozen in time, encapsulates what it means to be in the throes of impressionable and fleeting youth, and all that the magic of music, peace, love, and communion bring to it, whether one knows it at the time or not. (I think he knew it).”