A new Midland album coming this spring? Sign me UP.
The new album, officially titled The Last Resort: Greetings From, is set to drop May 6th, and will feature a collaboration with Jon Pardi on “Longneck Way To Go”.
The band dropped a fantastic collection of songs in 2020 (some of which appear on this tracklist) with their The Last Resort EP, so a full-length album promises to be a great addition to some of the other records we’re looking forward to in 2022 from other artists, like Hailey Whitters’ Raised and Zach Bryan’s American Heartbreak.
And Midland’s already sold me on this one with the creative play on words in the lyrics, where the narrator finds himself drinking as a last resort to mending his heartbreak… and they even find a really creative way to reference Keith Whitley’s “Miami, My Amy”… always a win in my book:
“Miami, My Amy left me high and dry,
The whole damn thing went south,
And so did I,
So bye bye,
Don’t know if these keys will work,
But I’ll try…”
The production here definitely has a bit of a beachy feel to it, but it’s also a sad honky tonk song like we’re used to hearing from Midland… can we call it a beach heartbreaker? That’s exactly what it is, and I love it.
Bassist Cameron Duddy calls it a buckle-polishing song:
“It’s a buckle-polishing song. Some songs dance all around it, but the truth is really told when the sun comes up.
We’ve never shied away from getting into the high grass when it comes to the way sex and romantic adventure are a big piece of what country music was, and we think should be.
But sometimes, the hunter gets captured by the game.”
Go ahead and add this one to your spring break playlist:
Of the new album, frontman Mark Wystrach says it has shades of Gary Stewart and The Eagles:
“It’s about more than the roots… because that makes you think of something that’s buried, which this music shouldn’t be.
It’s about creating country music that’s pure in a different kind of way, that draws on some of what’s been left behind but shouldn’t be. Some of these songs are pure Gary Stewart, others are the earliest Eagles stuff when they really were Country.”
And while we’ve already received a decent introduction to the song, Duddy says the title track really sets the tone for the whole album:
“We wanted ‘The Last Resort’ to be a track released before the album arrives because it’s kind of a manifesto for everything else.
You know sometimes the last resort doesn’t mean you’ve run out of options, but more that you’ve decided you’re going for the place or the thing that’s going to set you free.
That freedom of letting go and falling into space, giving it over to fate? That’s where real living begins…”
The Last Resort: Greetings From… is set to drop on May 6th.
The Last Resort: Greetings From Tracklist:
1. The Last Resort
2. If I Lived Here
3. Two To Two Step
4. Take Her Off Your Hands
5. Sunrise Tells The Story
6. And Then Some
7. Longneck Way To Go (Feat. Jon Pardi)
8. Life Ain’t Fair
9. King Of Saturday Night
10. Paycheck To Paycheck
11. Bury Me In Blue Jeans
12. Adios Cowboy
