Eastern Promise

Conveniently in keeping with the troubled region from which they get their name, there’s nothing straightforward about what’s going on in the Middle East right now. This woozy Aussie seven-piece released The Recordings of The Middle East in 2008, an album they didn’t consider “good enough” to be called an album. Then they split up and each member moved to a different city. Then they got back together and toured like crazy.

Now, six years after they formed, The Middle East have released an album which is absolutely, positively a proper album. Critics have been thoroughly charmed by the new 14-tracker, yet no-one from the band has had anything particularly good to say about it. If you’re baffled by their genealogy, wait until you get a load of their music.
Before now, The Middle East’s signature tune was ‘Blood’, a cheery piece of feelgood folk, complete with peppy whistles, tinkling xylophone and an utterly misleading title. Meanwhile, their debut album, I Want That You Are Always Happy, is as melancholy as they come.
“I love being confused,” co-songwriter Rohin Jones tells me, throwing back a finger of Guinness. “It’s one of my favourite states to be in. It’s engaging. You can go through a whole day being in between feelings, but if you’re confused it’s kind of something you have to grapple with, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
“That’s kind of why we picked a lot of the lyrics,” singer Jordan Ireland adds, “the song names, album name, album cover… why we do some of the things we do. It’s just because people can take it many different ways.”
“I almost feel like it’s more the role of the artist,” Jones picks up, “to get people to start thinking for themselves, and trying to figure stuff out, not just get fed some kind of ‘90s chorus that repeats 10 times. That said, repeating a chorus ten times can be pretty fucking cool as well!”
“Yeah, definitely,” Jones nods. “One’s not discrediting the other.”
There’s certainly no shortage of head-scratchworthy moments on the septet’s debut, including a handful of perplexing references to the big man in the sky. With lyrics like “Jesus, you’re a fire in my foreskin everyday” and song titles like ‘Jesus Came To My Birthday Party’, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was a mantra in the madness.
Ireland explains, “For us, music is always spiritual, not that the songs have any messages in them, but these vague spiritual wonderings between growing up and drinking a lot of booze and having this kind of profound connection to the world. Things that every common man feels.
"Jesus was this kind of stable, provocative dude that white man based his time on, AD and BC, and as a result of that, he’s kind of a representation of a lot of things. A lot of controversial issues have to do with this man, so we use it for that reason. And then also because we came from those kind of backgrounds where our parents went to church.”
All seven members of the band hail from the port city of Townsville in Queensland, which, if my research serves me correctly, isn’t exactly a buzzing metropolis of cutting edge sound.
“Anything but,” Ireland laughs. It’s about as bland as it gets. There’s us and there was another band in the ‘80s called The Spliffs!”
In many ways, this small-town philosophy has served the band well, but it’s also left The Middle East (the band, not the region) completely devoid of a competitive streak.
“Me and Jordan are idealistic,” Jones observes. “We can just record and play music forever. It’s hard for us to connect, I think, with the realities of being in the music industry. For us, the project was not meant to be this career move or trying to be a super successful thing. It was just another little thing we were doing and people started listening, which was great because we feel really lucky, but it’s still, for us, just one of the things we do.”
Okay, so they’re not great at tooting their own horn, but luckily there are plenty of Middle East fans out there who are more than happy to pick up the slack. When can we expect to see them back here for a show?
“It’s been really hard and challenging trying to play the album live,” Jones sniffs, “we’re kind of in the midst of it at the moment. We’ve got a tour coming up in Australia, but I think we’re all shitting our pants! I’m not sure it’ll translate very well, it’s just going to be chaos!”
“I imagine we’ll be playing maybe, 1,000-plus venues,” Ireland says. “The space where the security guards stand between you and the crowd, that’s where it’ll get lost, but those security guards will be inspired!”