Album Review – Midland’s “Stages”

Oh, Midland, what are we to do with you? As soon as we want to cast you off as The Monkees of country music with your embellished back story of an Austin bar band that made it big, you put out songs that make the mainstream of country so much better where you kind of don’t care about all the marketing behind it. Then as you become one of the sparks to light the current neotraditionalist revolution in country, you release a rather muted and disappointing album in 2024’s Barely Blue, thinking you could be the primary songwriters, and Dave Cobb’s production could cover for the thin material.

Where to land on Midland might have just as much to do with your mood that day as it does with the band and the music itself. But it’s hard to stay mad about them when listening to their new album Stages. Everything they got wrong on Barley Blue, they get right on this one. Everything you want from a Midland album, they deliver on. This is the Midland you know and love, if/when you love them.

As opposed to pretending they’re anything more than hit-or-miss songwriters who might be good for a song or two on each album, they put out the call for good country songs regardless of who wrote them, and pull in quality stuff from names like Dean Dillon, Josh Thompson, Carson Chamberlain, and Chris Stapleton. Instead of trying to be over-stylized or make some bold artistic expression that’s above their abilities, they solicit Trent Willmon as producer, known for making killer straight ahead traditional country records from folks like Cody Johnson and Drake Milligan.

The result is a neotraditional classic country record with killer hooks, twangy and tasty instrumentation, and the emphasis in all the right places, mainly Midland’s easy breezy coolness that helped make actual country music cool again to the masses, even if they did it in kind of an uncool way. Make no mistake about it though, Midland seeded the appetite for artists like Zach Top and Ella Langley. They were stepping stones to the widespread success traditional country enjoys today.

Worthy praise aside, Stages is still full of country clichés, worn-out drinking themes, rehashed storylines, and easy tropes. It never even attempts to venture beneath the surface and express something deeper. And even though they came into country as sort of the California cocaine cowboys in 2017 slinging coolness, nine years on they’re kind of a version of dad country, with younger guys like Zach Top, Kenny Whitmeier, Mack Geiger, Spencer Hatcher, Cole Goodwin, and so on and so forth taking the reigns of younger audiences.

But this 33-minute, 10-track album just breezes by in the best of ways. It’s not a great album of great songs. It’s a good listening album of good songs with no skips that you play on the porch or the dock on a summer afternoon, and nobody complains. Yes the songs and licks are cliché, but that’s inherent in old school country music, and being willing to embrace that and sell it with passion is part of the magic and potency of country songs. That might not be the greatest compliment to pay, but it’s very apt for this album.

“Shooting Memories With Tequila” and “Walk A Mile” have those lyrical hooks that are just so satisfying, and backed by the right sounds. It’s pretty ironic “Up In Texas” is being sung by guys from California, Oregon, and Arizona respectively (with an appearance by Clint Black). We already reached capacity for these “Texas is heaven” songs many years back. But that doesn’t mean the song doesn’t still work. “Vaquero” might be where the cheesy writing goes too far. But “Drinkin’ Dark Whiskey” co-written by Chris Stapleton feels like a heater, even if its another damn whiskey country song.

All you can ask for is an artist to be the best version of themselves. Midland was never going to bring the meaningful lyricism imbued with honky-tonk authenticity like the Silverada Moonpies, or the involved and reverberative moments of early Tyler Childers, or the rabid coolness of Ella Langley. But they can be who they are, which is a mid-career, mid-level band who can fill an amphitheater with cool vibes. And Midland coming back to earth in their career and putting out music that’s hard to hate might give them a bit more of the street cred they’ve always desired.

Either way, it doesn’t seem useful to the cause of saving country music to get in the way of Midland in this moment. Stages is good ol’ country music that makes you not want to hate Midland all over again.

8/10

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Stream/download Stages