‘I wish I could say I took five years off and went to Greece or something … ” Tim Smith lets the idea hang briefly. “But no,” he says. “No. I just got to work.” Smith, the founding vocalist of folk rock band Midlake, is explaining how 10 years ago the life he had known was dismantled – by himself and by others – and how he slowly built it anew. It’s a gentle story, as he tells it, though as he talks, one suspects the past decade has smoothed the edges of events that must have been painful.
Smith, speaking via computer, has requested that we keep the cameras off, and his voice rises in a steady, amiable monologue. “I left the band. And then unfortunately, I got divorced from my wife about two months after that – my wife wanted to divorce, I didn’t. But we were more like friends than lovers. So … I packed up and sold the house and then I moved away. I moved in with my parents actually, for quite a long time.”
