Lucky Number Music

Sydney trio Middle Kids have today released “Terrible News“, the latest single from their forthcoming album Faith Crisis Pt 1, set for release on February 16th and available to pre-order now.

Produced by Jonathan Gilmore (The 1975, beabadoobee), “Terrible News” is a confessional guitar laden track penned by lead vocalist Hannah Joy in an insecure time during covid. “There was a lot of confusion and information and rules and anger and people judging people and loss and distrust. I eventually felt so overwhelmed by all the noise, I couldn’t take it anymore.” explains Joy. “The guitars are kinda shouty too or maybe just urgent. I wanted to stack a lot of guitar layers to create almost a guitar choir. We got a friend Brendan Champion to play some brass on it which really elevates the song as it marches along.”

Watch the music video, directed by Nick Mckk and Claire Giuffre, below:

Sydney trio Middle Kids today share “Bend” – the latest single from their forthcoming album Faith Crisis Pt 1, set for release on 16 February 2024 and available to pre-order now.

Produced by Jonathan Gilmore (The 1975, beabadoobee), “Bend” is a soaring, emotive track about “finding the truth beneath the truth”, and was recorded in the UK in Eastbourne along with the rest of the album.

“I grew up with a solid framework for what life is, but I got to a point when I started to question some of the fundamental truths of what I believed. It was very painful and disorienting. I began to have this feeling that I couldn’t hold together all the things I valued, family, creativity, work, safety, community, spirituality.” explains lead singer Hannah Joy.

The video for “Bend”, above, is directed by acclaimed sibling directors The Potter Sisters who most recently directed films Far West and Nightswim. Filmed in Austin, TX, the video features a heavily pregnant Joy centred still in the chaos of a skate park with local skaters Ignacio Arriagada, Cristobal Arriagada, Chloë James, Atlas Chaney, JD Torian Jr and Tayvian Trejo.

Middle Kids today announce their new album, Faith Crisis Pt 1, set for release on February 16th 2024 and available to pre-order NOW.

Faith Crisis Pt 1 is the Sydney three-piece’s most ambitious work to date; over 13 propulsive and ecstatic tracks, the band explore lyrical and musical territory inspired by lead singer Hannah Joy’s search for meaning and identity after personal crisis. Joy attempts to tease out the question of belief; the breaking of it, and how it is rebuilt.

Recorded in Eastbourne in the UK and co-produced by Tim Fitz and Jonathan Gilmore (The 1975, Beabadoobee), Faith Crisis Pt 1 sees Joy and bandmates Fitz and Harry Day masterfully express the sensation of being overwhelmed, swept up and dragged down in songs brimming with yearning, angst, pop brightness, belief in love and reassurance that, from the bottom, it is possible to believe in beautiful things.

This is illustrated in new single “Dramamine”, which 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,” Joy sings on the bright, melodic pop track. It was co-written with Fitz, who is not only her bandmate but also her husband. “It feels like a song about the connection between belief and love.”

The track is accompanied by an extraordinary video created by notable director Nick McKinley (Julia Jacklin, Spacey Jane) and Tim Fitz and follows the release of singles “Bootleg Firecracker” and “Highlands”.

Faith Crisis Pt 1 reminds us that even in the darkest moments, belief can flourish.

A stunning piano-led rendition of “Bootleg Firecracker“, stripped down by Middle Kids lead singer and songwriter Hannah Joy, who describes the track as a song “about the power, magic and risk of intimacy. Sometimes it is easier to hide ourselves away from others. We’ve all experienced rejection. But sometimes we put ourselves out there and are received, loved, delighted in.”

Sydney-based three-piece Middle Kids today release their latest single “Highlands”, which showcases everything that has made them such a formidable force in recent years. The band take the bare-bones of indie-rock (guitar, bass, drums) and elevate their songs with an astonishing and euphoric vocal performance, scorching production and an incomparable pop-sensibility. The result is a song which grabs the listener from the opening bars and doesn’t let go for a thrilling three-and-a-half minutes.

“Highlands” is the band’s second song to be produced by Jonathan Gilmore, who is renowned for his work with The 1975 and Beabadoobee (amongst others). The song follows their recent single “Bootleg Firecracker” which weaved together intricate acoustic melodies and unconventional drum production which set it apart from their previous repertoire and ushered in a new era for the band.

The new single is accompanied by an extraordinary video directed by Toby Morris who took the band to shoot in the New South Wales highlands surrounding Jindabyne. The spectacular beauty of the region is offset by stunt driving, helicopters, horses, motorcycles and the Southern Hemisphere’s largest car-wrecking yard. The visual feast matches the ferocious immediacy of the song.

Lead singer and songwriter Hannah Joy said of the song: “Since I was young, I’ve had this yearning to be free. In this song I used an image of the ‘highlands’ as a euphoric place where I have the space to be me, and you have the space to be you. Part of the imagery comes from my Scottish heritage, which my grandmother was always so proud of. I recorded some big slow piano chords which Tim mangled into the atmospheric hits in the intro.

When we finished the song with Jon Gilmore in the UK, he thought it was important that the song felt punky, like a bunch of teenagers practising in their garage. So, there are these 2 energies fighting it out – the constricted energy of the domestic space and the wide open energy of the highlands. We have a friend who calls this kind of music ‘yearncore’. It’s that impatient energy that says, ‘I can’t keep waiting, I need a change’.”