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Interview with
MIDDLE KIDS

(16th February 2024)

Interview with Dave Bruce

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Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana

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For any new fans, how did the band come together? Is there a “driving force”, or do you all share the creative journey together?
Hannah was writing music for her own project when she met Tim and the two started collaborating on her songs. They employed the drumming services of Harry and thus the band was born. Hannah’s song writing voice is the driving force behind the band, it soars freely out into the ether above mainlining secret truths of the universe and human experience back down to earth, galvanising the three of us. Tim is the vision man, he will hear where a song can go and how it can become the best and truest version of itself. Harry is chief morale officer and lord of rhythm. There is a special chemistry when we get together to make music.

How would you describe your sound? Why do you think fans resonate with your music (obviously – Best Rock Album 2021 Arias)?
We make emotive indie rock music with a pop sentiment. I think the music is made to feel inviting, we want to invite people in to see if what we have to say resonates with them, whether that be on the level of an idea or experience, or on a more guttural, musical level. Yes it was very nice that our last album seemed to resonate with enough people to be dubbed thus – truly an honour.

Which artist’s music and/or performances, past or present, were the greatest influence in the beginning, and who inspires you today?
We are all been long term Radiohead fans, they have consistently created exceptional music on both of the levels I was just referring too, both in their recordings and live shows, and continue to push the boundaries in search of new ways of doing it. Some artists who inspire us today include Big Thief, Idles, and Alex G.

Your new album FAITH CRISIS PT. 1, which sounds like it is going to be another chart topper, will soon be released! Describe its origin and evolution.
Hannah begun writing the bulk of the songs for this record in the wake of an extended experience she had questioning her faith, losing her certainty in many of the things she grew up believing. A faith crisis is itself something that evolves, and you can see that evolution through themes of confusion, questioning, acceptance, death and rebirth that emerge throughout the album. The title actually came about at the end of the album making process, simply calling it what it was.

This album is obviously very significant on a personal level for Hannah. Which tracks are the signature tracks, and why? Which are her/your favourites to play live?
Bend is a significant track. It lies in the centre of the record and it deals with the central theme of losing faith in something whether it be a person or a system or God – when the pieces that have made up the framework to which you held no longer seem to fit together and begin to give way. Initially we weren’t quite sure how to approach this one, whether to leave it intimate and bare, more of a stripping away, or whether to make it a loud calamitous bash, so we ended up doing both. Hannah’s vocal performance really carries the recording in capturing both of these expressions of breakdown, and the truth that emerges from the ashes, that in order to go wider, deeper, you need to stretch, and you may need to break. Bootleg Firecracker has been a fun one to play live. We don’t have many moments in our set that invite everyone to settle into a mood like the one in this song, ourselves included. It is warm and sweet like the magic sort of intimacy referred to in the song, and we enjoying sinking into that.

With Hannah about to give birth (huge congrats), the tour and events calendar must be thin atm. Do you have an Album Launch tour on the drawing board? If so, what are you looking forward to, and what can the fans expect?
We will return with our numbers bolstered to deliver a world tour the likes of which Middle Kids fans have never seen before. Our last album tour was a bit coloured by the pandemic in terms of where we could play and the type of shows we could put on, so we are looking forward to pulling out all the stops and playing these new songs live.

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What was the North American Tour like with Manchester Orchestra and Jimmy Meet World? Do you struggle being away for so long or do you get swept up with the excitement night after night?
It was a very special experience, it was a great bill for us to be on, we share an affinity with those bands and the type of songs they write, and the fans they attract. Both those bands are veterans of the game and know how to do it well and try and make the experience of being on the road for a long time positive and fun. It was a long tour but we try and stay connected to the gift it is to get to share our music night after night with people who are ready to listen.

If you could perform with any music artist, Alive or Dead, who would you choose? And why? What long-term aspirations as a music artist are still on the bucket list?
Would have been pretty cool to play with Led Zeppelin aka the most rockin’ band of all time. Madison Square Garden is our Everest.

What advice would you give to budding artists who hold you on a pedestal for your achievements?
When you’re making music, you can not control the outcome, or how people receive it. You can only do your best to make the music as good as you can, and that is enough.

What is the best thing about performing to a live audience? What’s been the career highlight so far?
When you see a band live that you’ve listened to for a long time, it can be a very cathartic experience hearing them play the songs that have been the soundtrack to your life, that were with you as you went through good times and bad, that spoke to and acknowledged and affirmed and comforted you. That can be a healing experience. It is amazing that music has the power to do that. We played Red Rocks on that Jimmy / MO tour and that was really special. Just an iconic, beautiful venue where so many great artists have played.

Finally, a few questions for some quick answers –
FAVOURITE:
Album – On The Beach, Neil Young
Artist – Alex G
Movie – The Big Lebowski
Place to visit – Mimosa Rocks National Park, NSW
Venue to play – The Forum, Melbourne
Food – Mexican
Drink – Ranch Water
Person in History – Caesar Augustus
Tattoo – Angel

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About FAITH CRISIS PT. 1

There is a question at the heart of Faith Crisis Pt 1, the third album from Sydney’s emotive indie trio Middle Kids. Over 13 propulsive, ecstatic and gorgeous tracks, songwriter and vocalist Hannah Joy attempts to tease out the question of belief; the breaking of it, and how it is rebuilt. For Joy, the question is live and personal. But, as she observes with feeling in the chorus of Bend, ‘maybe you’ve got to break me to see what I’m made of.”

As an album title, Faith Crisis Pt 1 comes with its own baggage, and that’s kind of the point. “Most people I know have had some kind of faith crisis. It also feels that collectively humanity is finding it hard to muster belief, particularly in the beautiful things. It’s something we’re all learning to live through, at times with more grace and at times with less.” This is the journey that we are taken on, through songs filled with painful admission, prayers, pessimism, pop-psychology and pathos.

“A lot of these songs were written out at a time of my own faith crisis.” Caught in a pandemic with a newborn baby, many of the assumptions that Joy had held onto for her life until that point, that things would level out – that someone was in control, seemed to fall apart. “It’s extremely painful and stressful. You have to figure out how to respond to that – whether you deconstruct what you believe or just live in the tension.”

After a period of writer’s block, she took to the beach, where anonymous holiday rental shacks along the New South Wales coast have always been reliable spots for summoning the muse. The first song that broke like a wave was ‘Terrible News’, a series of “strange, shouty confessions of some of [her] insecurities”.

“On that song I kind of opened something. I think when I showed the boys ‘Terrible News’, they were like, ‘Oh, cool, we’re clicking into a gear here’.” The song captures one of the album’s central achievements: the way that Joy and bandmates Tim Fitz and Harry Day can express the sensation of being overwhelmed, swept up and dragged down in songs that exalt and lift you higher.

“There was a distilled purpose” to making the record, which was co-produced by Tim Fitz and producer Jonathan Gilmore in the UK. “The production and the sounds on this record are by far the best that we’ve been able to make,” Joy says. It was an ambitious and fitting collaboration; Gilmore has defined an era of indie pop with his work for artists including The 1975, Rina Sawayama and Beabadoobee.

As longtime fans, the band had reached out to Gilmore in 2022 and they ended up spending 6 weeks in a studio with him in the coastal town of Eastbourne, a few hours out of London. Fitz notes “The studio was it’s own time-warp, our creative bubble. We lost all perspective and nearly lost our minds, but we couldn’t be more proud of the recordings on this album.”

More key songs fell into place. ‘Dramamine’ makes a case for believing not in something bigger than yourself, but in the person by your side. “You are the only reason I believe in anything / I hope you don’t take this the wrong way / I wanna be your Mary Magdalene,” she sings on the bright, melodic pop track. It was co-written with Fitz, who’s not only her bandmate but also her husband. “It feels like a song about the connection between belief and love. I think when you love someone or are loved by them, it’s easier to believe in beautiful things.”

No one wins in the arm wrestle between head and heart. Logic vs. instinct, faith vs. reality, rose-tinted nostalgia vs. learning from the past – they’re less binary oppositions and more like pieces of a whole we have to assemble to help see us through. Cue ‘The Blessings’, a propellant guitar pop anthem about regret and wanting to rewrite the past. It builds to a cathartic howl that feels like the voices in your head grabbing hold of the mic.

Then – inhale, exhale. The vast, orchestral ‘The Blessings Interlude’ comes next. The first of two such instrumental moments on the record, it allows a moment for room to breathe. The moment passes, the door opens, and it’s time to keep moving.

The record’s other collaborator steps in in its final moments, as Joy traces the seeds of this particular faith crisis back more than a decade. On the tender, openhearted piano ballad ‘All in my Head’, Gang of Youths frontman Dave Le’aupepe joins Joy in questioning the reality behind the tension in her heart.

“I actually wrote that song many years ago and it’s always felt very special but I’ve never really known what to do with it,” Joy remembers. “It used to be a big full band song, but when we stripped it back to just me and the piano, I could see it for what it was.”

What it is, is a plea for patience and understanding, and a question asked of a silent room: “Am I going crazy?” To invite another voice into that space doesn’t cancel out the fear and loneliness, but it reminds us we’re not alone in it. “That questioning can be a very lonely place, so I like the idea of having Dave’s voice in there. Two people can be in that place and still feel kind of lonely, but they’re in it together.”

It’s a stunning kind of simplicity, not unlike the ideas that underpin Faith Crisis Pt 1. They’re the universal ones that are often too scary or ugly to utter aloud. They’re the critical thoughts that gurgle up in moments when you’re stuck – emotionally, by circumstance, or in your head. Silencing or ignoring them does no good when you’re tangled up and questioning the very core of your existence. So here are Middle Kids, making a case for singing through them.

After that satisfaction of escape, reality sets back in. ‘Bend’ finds Joy at her most exposed, a desperate, fraying raw nerve threatening to snap in two. But only through the crack can the light get in; the only way to climb up is from the bottom. Landing on a new version of faith – or finding herself on the other side of a crisis of faith – requires letting go of the one that felt, for so long, true and sure.

The first question Hannah Joy asked at the onset of her faith crisis was a big one, but after it came few answers and endless other questions. At the end of the record, on her duet with Le’aupepe, Joy leaves listeners with one more, a prompt that holds the door open to find – or create – something new to hold onto. “I like the idea of ending Faith Crisis Pt 1 with the question. ‘Is it all in my head?’ Because, of course it is.”

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MIDDLE KIDS’ NEW ALBUM ‘FAITH CRISIS PT. 1’ IS OUT NOW
STREAM / BUY HERE

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MIDDLE KIDS
Touring Australia & USA
in May/June 2024

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

Tickets on sale today at 10am local time

Fri 10 May – Forum, Melbourne
Sat 11 May – Theatre Royal, Castlemaine
Sat 18 May – Bass in the Grass
Thu 23 May – Astor, Perth
Fri 24 May – Gov, Adelaide
Fri 31 May – Hotel Brunswick, Byron Bay
Sat 1 Jun – Tivoli, Brisbane
Fri 7 Jun – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Fri 14 June – Los Angeles, CA at Lodge Room 
Sat 15 June – San Francisco, CA at August Hall 
Mon 17 June – Portland, OR at Doug Fir 
Tue 18 June – Seattle, WA at Neumos 
Fri 21 June – Minneapolis, MN at Fine Line 
Sun 23 June – Chicago, IL at Thalia Hall 
Mon 24 June – Columbus, OH at A&R Bar 
Fri 28 June – Brooklyn, NY at Music Hall of Williamsburg 
Sun 30 June – Washington, DC at Atlantis

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Follow MIDDLE KIDS
Website – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter

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Press Release 16th February 2024 (below) HERE

MIDDLE KIDS
release new album
“FAITH CRISIS pt 1”

STREAM / BUY HERE

Latest single
“ALL IN MY HEAD”
featuring DAVE LE’AUPEPE

LISTEN / WATCH THE VISUALISER HERE

Band announce
Australia & USA Tour
for May/June

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AMNPLIFY – DB