Hometown: Omaha, NE
Website: www.midwestdilemma.com
Sounds Like: Andrew Bird, Bright Eyes, Sufjan Stevens, Blind Pilot, Rocky Votolato Official Music Page
Genre: Rock
Twenty-three members, consisting of strings, woodwinds, brass, orchestral drums, and nontraditional chamber instruments accompany singer-songwriter Justin Lamoureux. Timelines & Tragedies is a timeline of family history, tracing Lamoureux's ancestors to their days of French Canadian fur trading, the struggles of his parents' generation with Vietnam, and eventually concluding with his life in Omaha. Timelines & Tragedies is the perfect outcome of Midwest Dilemma's vision.
“On Vie et On Aime et On Croix”
Ames Progressive
“An imperfect masterpiece”
The Rumpus
“The superior storytelling and perfected neurosis of Timelines would make even the late Nick Drake crack a smile.”
Hybrid Magazine
"Midwest Dilemma has created a brave, introspective and genre-bending first offering with Timelines and Tragedies."
Tracer Magazine
“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.”
Frederick Foxtrott
“Acoustic Americana, with a subtle instrumental backing that dips from old folk to stylized cinescape.”
Song, By Toad
"Midwest Dilemma has constructed a journey for the spirit."
Canadian Audiophile
"If you would have told me earlier in the day that I’d kick off the start of my weekend sitting around listening to 400 years of family history, I probably would have told you to piss off... Midwest Dilemma’s Timelines & Tragedies, I’m pleased to report that I’m doing exactly that."
Rock Sellout
“Using strings, woodwinds, guitars, accordion and a musical saw this album catapults itself to the upper echelons of folk music.”
Here Comes The Flood
"This is an album for our times."
Metric Reflection
"Midwest Dilemma feels like a band that must not only be heard, but witnessed."
Enough Cowbell
“Lamoureux is a stream, it doesn’t matter if for a time he is only trickling through rocks and soil, his conviction is the rainfall, pouring much needed force sustenance to the stream – it can’t be stopped. He will find his ocean; it’s inevitable.”
CityWeekly
"Above all, there is an inexplicable power to Timelines & Tragedies that gives it such an epic quality."
Radio Indy