Description
The Sydney-based three-piece Middle Kids, formed of lead singer and songwriter Hannah Joy, multi-instrumentalist Tim Fitz and drummer, Harry Day, will release their second album, Today Were The Greatest, on March 19th 2021 via Lucky Number. Recorded and produced in Los Angeles by Lars Stalfors (St. Vincent, Soccer Mummy, Purity Ring), the follow-up to the bands award-winning 2018 debut, Lost Friends, is their most personal and courageous effort to date. Moving away from lyrics of a more conceptual nature, Today Were The Greatest is the open, uninhibited product of fearless collaboration. Showing a real vulnerability, Joy is pulling directly from her own experiences and breaking down barriers she had previously set for herself. About the new record, she said: I want to make music that loves its listener. Music that makes people feel seen, seen in the tiny little places that hide away in their hearts. I want people to hear our music, and feel a sense of love. And when I say love, it can be challenging, intense and tough. But its in the guts. She added: It can be easier to live dualistically, splitting the world in two. We want to be able say its this or its that, but sometimes its both and can we hold both? Can we hold the brokenness? Can we hold the beauty? That has definitely been a defining bit of this album, the fragility in that dance.
The album includes nervy Strokes-esque floorfiller (The Guardian) R U 4 Me? and their monumental new single, Questions, a charged three-minute odyssey which sees Joy struggle poetically with concepts of honesty and intimacy over an explosive rhythm section and a stunningly orchestrated brass-filled climax. As Joy explains, Questions is about the fallacies of intimate relationships; I used to drink a lot and most of my previous relationships revolved around this. I dont think I ever really knew them or they me as a result. Questions is about people being around each other but not being close. People who are in intimate relationships can stop asking questions of each other because they are uncomfortable and confusing.
Other tracks like Run With You, were written when Joy was a few months into pregnancy with her and Tim Fitz, her husband and bandmates, first child. They recorded her 20-week sonogram, and wove the gentle, rapid thump of their baby boys beating heart into the last 20 seconds of the track an exuberant declaration of devotion. Joys journey to motherhood and her marriage with Fitz has imbued her songs with a vibrancy thats unabashedly romantic yet free of clichés. Theres also Stacking Chairs, with its unique allegories and Joys sunny vocals, that strikes this delicate balance beautifully: its a testament to her deep connection with Fitz and the new, infinitesimal love that transformed their lives with their sons arrival.
Timeless songs that sound like immediate classics Lost Friends is a treat A Best Debut Album of 2018 NME
Led by the powerful vocals of Hannah Joy, the trio deal in infectious indie pop-rock. The Sunday Times
Heartfelt, clever ruminations at the intersection of indie rock and alt-country Rolling Stone
they effectively thread the winsome early-90s alt pop of Belly and the Cranberries with the big-tent ambitions of 00s-era ensembles like Arcade Fore and The National Pitchfork
How does a band get this good, this quickly? Billboard
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