“Honestly, the Forum is probably one of my favourite venues,” Hannah Joy tells me over Zoom, speaking from her home in Sydney.
After the release of their third studio album earlier this year – Faith Crisis Pt 1 – the lead guitarist and vocalist of indie rock darlings Middle Kids is ramping up for two shows at the iconic CBD venue on May 10 and 12, the first having already sold out and the second not far behind.
“They’re the first shows of the tour, as well,” Joy says. “I’m kind of scared.” For a rockstar from one of Australia’s leading indie rock bands to be scared of anything feels, to me, a bit surprising.
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Since the release of their debut single Edge of Town in 2016, Middle Kids have been working toward the kind of career alt-rock dreams are made of.
Consisting of lead vocalist and guitarist Joy, bass guitarist Tim Fitz and drummer Harry Day, the band has filled just under a decade with international tours, charted songs, album awards and sensational music. Surely, that gives Hannah Joy grounds for feeling like a superstar.
But she’s human, too, Joy reminds me, when I point out a line in the radiant rock anthem from Faith Crisis Pt 1, Terrible News. “I don’t know who I am / What I’m supposed to prove,” Joy chants on the track, between declarations of fearlessness.
“Does it ever stop?” I ask her, referring to the constant confusion of the self that most creatives – most anyone – can relate to. Joy laughs at my naivety. “You’re like, ‘When do we resolve this?’” she jokes.
The answer is maybe never. “I think there’s definitely parts of myself that I feel much more like, ‘Oh okay, this is kind of my deal,’” Joy says, “but I still think that there are lots of things that I’m very confused by all the time.”
You can hear it on Terrible News – the duality of self-assurance, the flipping between asserting that “I’m not scared / so brave” in the opening lines, juxtaposed against the crisis of confidence that rears its head in later verses. And you can hear it on the entirety of the album, these small, sometimes big, sometimes all-consuming, crises of belief, of faith.
While Faith Crisis Pt 1 feels, on the surface, like an album about ideas of belief being challenged and reckoned with, it also feels intrinsically like an exploration of holding onto faith during times of crisis.
“It’s actually still full of a lot of curiosity and hope and joy,” Joy says about the album. “It’s not just doom and gloom crisis, it’s kind of the wrestle with faith and belief.” The ‘part one’ of it all, she says, is almost like a wink or a nod toward the idea of all that’s to come. “We were trying to lighten it up a bit, to almost say that there are gonna be more faith crises. It’s just one of many, probably.”
This is the kind of art Middle Kids are best at making – the kind that shows they take their work seriously without taking themselves too seriously.
The winks, nods and eye rolls work as an attempt to cut through the bullshit of the world they’re surrounded by while sending home the sincerity of their music. This is heard most aptly on the phenomenal Your Side, Forever.
“Choirs of voices on my phone / just make me feel alone,” Joy croons before the chorus hits with the plea that “It’s alright, I’m on your side, on your side forever.” “You go on the internet and everyone just thinks everybody’s shit,” Joy tells me.
“And whilst things are hard and gnarly and bad and dire, it’s really important to hold that intention with the beauty of people and the beauty of life.”
The world can be shit, things can be hard, Joy says, “But there are very real beautiful, life-giving things happening at the same time.”One of those beautiful, life-giving things has just happened in Joy’s own life, with the recent birth of her second child.
While Middle Kids’ music has always been reflective in a way that consults past histories and intertwines memories, there are notedly a plethora of tracks on Faith Crisis Pt 1 that seem to use the process of looking back in order to look forward.
“I found I became deeply reflective [upon having kids] and I still am, because you’re just faced with different things,” Joy says. “You start having to think about what you think is important and true because that’s what you’re giving to this little person.”
One of the standouts on the album comes at the midpoint in the track list, like a peak in the mountains that lets Joy look down and around and reflect on where she is now. Highlands is a story of moving on and moving forward, but not without looking back, and not without knowing that this moment is, in some way, another beginning. “Wherever you are, we’re just getting started,” she sings.
“I think that we often have memories that still haunt us, or we are still confused by,” Joy reflects. “And then also [we’re] trying to predict other parts of our stories, looking ahead or trying to think about what you might want or what you’re afraid of.”
Fear, and reckoning with it, was in many ways the catalyst of Faith Crisis Pt 1. After just having her first kid and with the pandemic still shuttering our cities – and music venues – Joy began writing in a time in which everything that was once thought solid started to feel fragile.
The album was born as a result of writing through these moments, trying to figure it all out. “I think the more I’m living,” Joy says, “the more I realise you never really get to the bottom of anything.”
Having missed out on a proper album tour because of the pandemic for their 2021 release Today We’re the Greatest, touring Faith Crisis Pt 1 holds an extra sparkle to the shine of the upcoming shows. Beginning at Melbourne’s Forum on May 10 and 12 – one of Joy’s most loved venues – the tour will be full of new favourites, old goodies and maybe even some deep cuts from the band’s discography.
“And it’s different every single time,” Joy says about Middle Kids’ shows. “You are always in a different place with different people in a different moment in time.” She pauses, trying to sum it all up – all that energy and chaos and sound and colour. “That’s what’s cool about live music,” she says.
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