Frederick Foxtrott

Midwest Dilemma
Timelines & Tragedies
May 20th 2008
Self Released

Maybe, just maybe, the cooption of music that has largely flown under the radar for the better part of the last decade by soulless corporations can be avoided. The Billboard oriented marketing machines are systematically being dispossessed of their tastemaking power. Major labels, when they can acquire them, harvest artists who have already established a national following from their independent releases. Fortunately for independent artists, a major label contract is no longer seen as always the optimal circumstance for national exposure, sustained industry influence, and market representation. This enervation of the gate keepers has fostered resistance against artistic compromise in nearly all sectors of the music industry. It is evidenced by the emergence of successfully branded indie labels such as Kill Rockstars, Matador, Jagjaguwar, and Saddle Creek; it is evidenced by the successful dislocation of goliath music makers such Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails from their respective and restrictive major label bonds; it is even evidenced by interlabel dealings such as Wilco’s refusal to accommodate Reprise’s critical observations of their seminal release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which led to their auspicious migration to Nonesuch, a label that ironically along with Reprise are both subsidiaries of the major conglomerate Warner Bros. Records.

Through the democratizing power of the internet, and an increasingly ability for local communities of artists to obtain national exposure, we are beginning to see a number of bands release music independent of any label at all. They are the “self-released” categories of burgeoning blogs everywhere (I love me). Even though their trajectory might lead many bands to any number of market deals, their injection into large scale networks of critical discourse through modest industry connections has clearly signal a shift in the fundamental paradigm of artist ascendancy, and this change it seems will be long lasting and far reaching.

From Omaha, Nebraska Midwest Dilemma has caught my attention with their densely organic and texturally rich debut Timelines & Tragedies. While consisting of as much as 10 core members, Midwest Dilemma recorded in bloom with 23 musicians and vocalists, an indication of the ambitious and highly masterful orchestration of the project. As their name implies Midwest Dilemma’s endeavor is steeped in folksy Americana. It not only seeks to lyrically reconstruct the narrative of songwriter Justin Lamoureux’s family as they traveled from Montreal, Canada to Nebraska in the 19th century, but it also serves to define a musical tradition whose flair and flavor has definite regional roots. The Midwest is an incredibly rich landscape that is colored by the lived experiences of both its colonized and marginalized pre-European inhabitants and the various pioneers and traders that eventually came to form the towns and cities that today spot the vast plains, prairies, and bluffs from Wyoming to Ohio. The resulting constructed music culture is as distinct as the Southern-Gothic genre explored by artists like Iron & Wine and Phosphorescent.

Timelines & Tragedies is a string heavy odyssey that incorporates woodwinds and orchestral percussion to accentuate its epic recollection of the Lamoureux family’s journey. Using stories passed from generation to generation through old letters and family folklore, Lamouroux and company have produced an ethnographic testimonial. The record is more than episodic; it is a beautiful and memorizing patchwork of individual characters that in their juxtaposition recount a shared history of the Midwest. The themes, while specifically engrossed in a particular family’s past, speak as much about how we reflect on all stories of exodus. Timelines & Tragedies does an extraordinary job of telling the immigrant’s story, one that distills the shared experience of severed roots and the dismembering and intimidating shift out of the safe boundaries of home into an uncertain future. Each song moves through time toward the present, allowing for each successive generation to contextualize current predicaments with the preceding memory of past struggle. Timelines & Tragedies is a genealogy; it is thick, articulate, and captivating.

As far as Midwest Dilemma’s place in establishing their own relevance beyond the role storytellers, I applaud their emergence as a sign of the times. With their impending tour toward New York City this fall, I look forward to catching a show. I often wonder when this flood of independence might subside, leaving only the most contrived and commercially viable bands to suffer the dictates of the Billboard hierarchy. Midwest Dilemma gives me hope that we have entered a new age of production, one that like the band’s own inspiration, relies on local communities and personal relationships to direct ascendancy. Timelines & Tragedies is a debut produced with extraordinary talent and ambition, the limits of which may only be bound by the degree of Midwest Dilemma’s interest in telling their story.

-FF

7/9

http://www.midwestdilemma.com/
http://www.myspace.com/midwestdilemma

Related Sounds
Decemberists
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Beirut

Tour
10/17 – Omaha, NE @ PS Collective – 10pm
10/18– Ames, IA @ Ames Progressive Office – 7pm
10/19 – Sheboygan, WI @ Paradigm – 8pm
10/20 – Louisville, KY @ The Space at 6th and Oak – 8pm
10/22 – Muncie, IN @ Village Green Records – 7pm
10/23 – Philadelphia, PA @ Green Line Café – 7pm
10/24 – New York, NY @ Café Vivaldi – 8pm
10/25 – Biddeford, ME @ Hogfarm Studios – 8pm
10/26 – Cambridge (Boston), MA @ Lily Pad – 7pm
10/27 – New York, NY @ The Living Room – 7pm
10/28 – Hamden, CT @ The Space – 8pm
10/29 – Montpelier, VT @ Langdon Street Café – 8pm
10/30 – Buffalo, NY @ Bon Vivant – 8pm
10/31 – Cleveland, OH @ Barking Spider Tavern – 8pm
11/1 – Chicago, IL @ Red Line Tap – 8pm
11/2 – Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews – 10pm