Eastern Promise
They’re far from being their own biggest fans, so it’s a good thing that Aussie folk-rockers The Middle East already have a hefty following both at home and abroad. As their kind-of, sort-of debut album hits the shelves, Celina Murphy meets co-songwriters Rohin Jones and Jordan Ireland.
Celina Murphy, 13 Jul 2011
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.”
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